Technical Infrastructure: Global Standards versus local Assets ,
Because Terra kept the disparate technical architectures of its acquired ISPs, it had a more fragmented infrastructure. Terra's portal in Argentina looked very different fromTerra's portal in Mexico, and content could not be easily shared between these two systems. In contrast, Lycos tried to create a common technical infrastructure that supports reuse of content in multiple countries. In theory, any piece of content could be put into a Lycos-friendly format and distributed around the world. Of course, Lycos faced some exceptions to this ideal of global leveraged standards. For example, Lycos is interested in acquiring firms in Asia that have built the specialized double-byte-enabled tools (chat or messaging software) that lets users type and read Asian-language characters. Whereas Lycos created a global platform, Terra conglomerated different technical platforms as it bought different country-specific Internet companies.