NETWATCH . . . COMPUSERVE BUYS SPRY

The race to offer Internet access and services to just plain folks has gone up another notch: CompuServe last night announced it will purchase software company Spry Inc. -- maker of the popular "Internet in a Box" -- for $100 million. The acquisition mirrors the strategies followed by several online competitors. Last fall, America Online bought Booklink Technologies Inc., which had developed its own World Wide Web browser software; Prodigy now offers Web access, and Microsoft plans to do so through its as-yet unlaunched Microsoft Network. Spry will now become CompuServe's Internet Division.

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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