"I've heard of such plans from media planners in other countries, where Yahoo! is already present," says Ewelina Dworak, head of Internet advertising at media house OMD. "Should WP go out of the market, it would certainly create favorable conditions for a new entrant."
She adds, however, that even with the current number of players, there is enough space on the market for a global portal to launch a Polish-language version. There is a niche on the market for a mixed language portal in both Polish and English, she says.
Yahoo! declined to comment on the rumors.
"It would not be appropriate for anyone at the company to talk of such plans right now," says Sue Jackson, a spokeswoman at the portal's European headquarters in London.
Łukasz Wejchert, deputy president of onet.pl, another major player on the local market, says that such a development would be natural at some stage of market development. He adds, however, that he does not see any scope for a new entrant at present and expects a major international player to move in on the country in about two years. Should yahoo.pl be launched by year end, as some market insiders suggest, it would be difficult to accommodate all the players.
Meanwhile, the fate of Wirtualna Polska is the subject of lively speculation. The portal has been forced to file for bankruptcy due to an acrimonious shareholder dispute between TP Internet (TPI), a Telekomunikacja Polska (TP SA) subsidiary which controls 80 percent of the portal, and a group of minority owners led by Maciej Grabski. TPI agreed to buy out minority shareholders when it acquired the portal two years ago, but refuses to pay the zł.230 million price that it is alleged to have agreed to at the peak of the Internet bubble.
Last Tuesday, WP's general shareholders' meeting once again failed to agree on a planned equity increase, necessary to bail out the struggling company. The sides are gearing up for a lengthy legal battle that could well sink WP.
"There is a lot of black PR against WP, but it is all spun by its competitors," OMD's Dworak says. "Users don't care for skirmishes between shareholders, and the number of unique users has been on the increase over recent weeks." She remains confident that, even if WP perishes amid the conflict, this would not have an adverse effect on the Internet advertising market, which has enjoyed healthy growth rates since the latter half of 2003.
Wejchert agrees, saying that the market would not shrink, "even in the extreme case of WP shareholders failing to reach an agreement. The budgets would simply be allocated to a smaller number of portals." Unless, that is, yahoo.pl materializes in the coming months.
Aleksander Nowacki
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