This past December, Media Metrix established its first beachhead in the European press with the release of rankings, by its subsidiary MMXI-Europe, of the top 10 sites in the UK, France and Germany for the month of November, 1999. Media Metrix produces its rankings through a software application, the "Meter," that is installed on the computers of participants in the survey, of whom there are close to 3,000 in each country. The Meter carefully records every aspect of the survey participants' surfing behaviour, "site by site, click by click, second by second."

Although I poked around most of the corners of their website, I couldn't find any information on just who the participants are, whether they are paid, or how they are selected that somehow makes them, as MMXI claims, "representative of Internet users." I would imagine that anyone who has ever felt the need to clear their browser history might hesitate before signing up for second by second monitoring of their Internet use.

But bringing the topic back to portals, which is, after all, the raison d'être of Traffick: the biggest surprises in the MMXI European surveys were the strong showing of Yahoo and the relatively weak position of AOL.

As I reported in my last column, T-Online from Deutsche Telekom and Wanadoo from France Telecom were the number one web properties in their respective countries. Their leads were fairly significant with T-Online having a 68.5% reach, more than double second-place Yahoo's 32.6% reach for Germany, and Wanadoo having a 51.3% reach over Yahoo's 41.4% second second-place ranking. In the UK, the leading site by a slim margin was Freeserve, backed by a popular chain of electronic stores, which captured a huge chunk of the ISP market in Britain by being the first out of the gate with a free ISP service, a business model that has since rippled across Europe. And yes, Yahoo was in second place.

The media generally seemed to show surprise at Yahoo's strong presence in Europe, given that it has had a much lower profile than the vocal AOL and everybody's bête noir, Microsoft. But the key to Yahoo's success is their strong focus on categorizing the best local content, something they accomplish by hiring surfers with first-hand knowledge of the local culture. In addition to their staff in London, Paris and Munich, Yahoo imports fresh local recruits into their Santa Clara headquarters. So many, in fact, that they were probably one of the principal causes of the U.S. federal government having to raise the limits on visas for the IT sector.

AOL finished third in Germany, although it would be in second place if the Netscape sites were included, and fifth in the UK and France. After the recent announcement of a merger with Time-Warner, AOL's future in Europe is uncertain. The press has tried to make sense of how all that Time-Warner content will benefit, and bring in more, AOL subscribers.

Despite the fact that Europeans do indeed eat up American films and music, I don't think that the prospect of having first dibs on Warner Bros films, or Warner recording artists' music downloads, will bring Europeans stampeding to the AOL gates. If I may quote a slide from an inaccessable study, Project Atlas 1999, by IDC, over 75% of Germans and almost 60% of the French prefer native language sites. And in case you were wondering what the most popular movie of 1999 was in France, you may be surprised to discover that the young Anakin Skywalker was defeated by... Gerard Depardieu as Obelix in "Asterix et Obelix contre Cesar."

The biggest fallout from the Time-Warner merger might be the effect on AOL's relationship with German media giant, and Time-Warner competitor, Bertelsmann. Thomas Middelhoff, CEO and Chairman of Bertelsmann, has announced that he would resign from the board of AOL. Although both sides are claiming that the merger won't disrupt the close relationship between Bertelsmann and AOL Europe, we might want to keep an eye on any new developments over at Lycos Europe, where Bertelsmann also has a 26% stake.

The challenge for the major portals to succeed outside of the U.S. is to provide useful and entertaining local content, which means engaging with cultures that are foreign to the North American experience, and not simply slapping subtitles onto their pre-existing properties. Otherwise, their only function will be as guides to North American internet resources, something which is useful now, but as the internet continues to develop in Western Europe and beyond, they risk being pushed aside by up-and-coming native sites. However, the same warning applies to any local site that tries to break out of its national and linguistic boundaries.

Despite my reservations about MMXI, they have succeeded in bringing attention to the much neglected native European portal scene and I only hope that they continue to expand their sample pool to cover more and more countries. It is difficult enough to get any measure of European internet users' habits, let alone trying to establish what's going on in Moldova or Kyrgyzstan. (Perhaps I'll explain why one would possibly want to know that in a future column.) So more power to MMXI and any competitors that should emerge.

In my next column, I'll take a look at some of the sites, and partnerships of sites, that are trying to become pan-European portals.

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So how is the view from the Alps? You can reach J.C. Allison at jca@traffick.com.