Palm Shutting Down Web Portal

Owing to the downfall of the dot-com economy and the companys own tough economic situation, Palm Inc. is getting rid of the MyPalm Web portal that enables customers to store their personal data on the Web.

Beginning January 10, Palm will no longer offer the My Palm portal services, which include Date Book and Address Book, Date Book Update and Free Time Viewer applications.

Any personal information that customers are storing through the portal will be permanently deleted on January 10, said officials at Palm in Santa Clara, Calif.

The company is recommending that current MyPalm customers retrieve their portal data with MyPalm Sync software, which is still available for download on the site.

Palm VII and Palm VIIx users who subscribe to the Palm.Net service will still be able to receive their Palm.Net e-mail, officials said.

MyPalm was launched in November 2000, when advertisers were still keen on sponsoring even the most speculative Web ventures. Early on, though, critics said that the portal was unnecessary because Palm users tend to carry their contact and calendar information with them on their Palm devices anyway. Most users synchronize their handhelds with the desktop software that comes bundled with all Palm devices, so the Web portal was often superfluous.

Even while MyPalm is being shut down, Palm is planning portals that will give enterprise customers access to corporate services. Palm earlier this year had joint plans with Accenture Ltd. for such a portal, but the venture fizzled. In an interview at Comdex Fall 2001 earlier this month Palm software subsidiary president and CEO David Nagel said that some sort of corporate portal is still likely. He named PriceWaterhouse Coopers as a possible partner, but declined to be more specific.