What went wrong in Sweden?
Arredondo: Sweden is a small market with some heavily entrenched players. Our competitor, Scandinavia Online, spent an enormous amount of money and has been willing to lose millions and millions. We want to be profitable. Another difficulty in Sweden is the lack of solid market statistics. We don’t think the published numbers there reflect what’s happening in the market. BW: Why have you not gone into Eastern Europe and Russia, where local portals are springing up? Arredondo: We look at market size from potential advertising base to decide whether we should be there. The only major European market where we are not yet present is the Netherlands. That should change. And we still think it’s O.K. to cover Belgium out of France and Austria out of Germany. BW: Would you go into Russia? Arredondo: Yes, there is market potential. But if you look at the advertising and e-commerce market, it is not strong enough to warrant an investment. BW: What about strong local players elsewhere, such as Ge
