E-economy: giants are keeping a low profile (Libé)

How did big French groups, which set out in the conquest of the Internet, evolve with the crisis in the sector? From Lagardère to Europatweb, in real disorder, Vivendi to Wanadoo or PPR: all of them are reducing their investment in the Net. The daily paper Libération reviewed the situation, with the article "E-economy: giants are keeping a low profile".

Lagardère Active Broadband (LAB) started its second redundancy scheme: 50 jobs were shed in May 2001 and an additional 65 before the end of the year out of a total of 450 employees. At Vivendi's, they are drastically decreasing costs and they are introducing paying models (Education.com). Wanadoo, the subsidiary of France Telecom, has just announced they will re-organize their structures and will gather its portal or e-commerce activities within the same entities. If PPR Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (FNAC, Conforama, etc) suffers less because they are less committed to the Net, however, the most spectacular collapse is the one of Europatweb (current owner of Aucland and former owner of Respublica at Sophia-Antipolis). If start-ups of the new economy suffer, big groups do as well !