AOL’s Case Leaves Excite Board

Excite Inc. said Steve Case, America Online Inc.’s chairman and chief executive, resigned from Excite’s board, as increasing competition between the Internet services kept him from taking part in decisions. AOL executives were unavailable to comment. Excite and AOL have come more into competition during the past year as Excite has evolved from an Internet directory that provides World Wide Web addresses and lists of information into a broader online service. Excite has added more services, including e-mail, and signed marketing agreements that compete with AOL, the No. 1 online service. Excite said Case and his lawyers believed he faced conflicts as a board member when Excite officials mapped strategy. “He has had to exclude himself from most major discussions,” said George Bell, Excite’s president and chief executive. Case joined the board in November 1996, when Excite bought AOL’s WebCrawler Internet directory. Excite said AOL owns about a 17% stake in the company on a fully diluted basis, and the company still had the right to a board seat. Redwood City-based Excite said William Campbell, president and chief executive of Intuit Inc., which bought a 19% stake in Excite in June, joined the board as an observer. Separately, Excite reported sharply higher than expected revenue and earnings for its third quarter. After the market closed, Excite reported a net loss of $5.7 million, or a 37 cents a share loss on revenues of $14.4 million, compared with a net loss of $9.4 million, or 78 cents, on revenues of just $4 million a year earlier. Excite shares fell 44 cents to close at $32.06 on Nasdaq.