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WBS daily page views were down to 5 million in April, 1998.<ref name="infoseek_losses">{{Cite news | title=Infoseek Pares Its Losses | work=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] | date=23 April 1998 | url=https://www.wired.com/1998/04/infoseek-pares-its-losses/ | access-date=23 May 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090912022907/https://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/04/11889 | archive-date=12 September 2009 | url-status=live}}</ref>
When Infoseek acquired WBS there had been several web portals that added chat as a service. [[Lycos]] had bought the [[Tripod.com|Tripod]] community in February 1998 and Yahoo had added a deal with [[GeoCities]] in January 1998. There was strong competition between the web portals to match each other's services. WBS, at the time of the Infoseek acquisition, had 2.7 million registered users. This total was more than the membership of Tripod and GeoCities combined. WBS had only 350,000 personal homepages at the time. Infoseek's three main competitors at the time were Lycos, Yahoo, and [[Excite (web portal)|Excite]].<ref>{{Cite web | first=Joe | last=Nickell | title=Web Portals Play Leapfrog | work=Wired | date=17 April 1998 | url=https://www.wired.com/1998/04/web-portals-play-leapfrog/ | access-date=19 August 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090912023359/https://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1998/04/11744 | archive-date=12 September 2009 | url-status=live}}</ref>
In 1998, Infoseek was purchased by the [[Go Network]]. On September 15, 1999, WBS was shut down and many of the more popular rooms were transferred to Go's Java-based chat system. All that was left for the members at that time was this simple message: "Go.Com has decided to close down WBS and move its most popular rooms to the chat rooms at Go.Com. Your home pages will still be viewable for an undetermined amount of time. Thank you for supporting WBS during its existence." By the Spring of 2000, all home pages had been deleted. Go.com abandoned chat entirely in 2001.
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