Lights out forever at Excite@Home

Few employees or customers could have imagined that Excite@Home would come to this. Venture capitalists and executives created Excite@Home in January 1999, when Web portal Excite.com completed a $6.7 billion merger with @Home--the largest deal between Internet companies. The company provided the optical backbone for its cable partners, and it eventually amassed 4.1 million subscribers--45 percent of Americans with home broadband access. --Alorie Gilbert and Rachel Konrad, Special to ZDNet News Stacks of disassembled office furniture, rows of boxed computers and a bright yellow moving truck idling in front of the company's headquarters marked the final chapter of high-speed Internet provider Excite@Home, which ceased operations at midnight Thursday.

Few employees or customers could have imagined that Excite@Home would come to this. Venture capitalists and executives created Excite@Home in January 1999, when Web portal Excite.com completed a $6.7 billion merger with @Home--the largest deal between Internet companies. The company provided the optical backbone for its cable partners, and it eventually amassed 4.1 million subscribers--45 percent of Americans with home broadband access. --Alorie Gilbert and Rachel Konrad, Special to ZDNet News