The Prodigy Services Co joint venture between IBM Corp and Sears, Roebuck & Co always presents a serene face to the world, but over its 11-year history, it has stumbled from disaster to crisis, getting through an estimated $1,000m of its parents’ cash with nary a red cent of profit to show for it all. Now it is to slash its workforce again, firing 100 of its 700 employees, and dumping much of what made it distinctive – out goes internally-generated content and in come open Internet protocols throughout its network and for all new content for its various services in place of the existing proprietary system used to structure its information – switching to Hypertext Markup Language from the viewdata-derived NAPLPS North American Presentation Level Protocol Standard.
