NBC paid $26 million for a 4.99 per cent stake in Cnet, or 19 per cent of its Snap! subsidiary, which provides Internet search and navigation services. The deal makes NBC the first major broadcast network to enter the Internet directory and search business.

Even in the rapidly evolving online landscape, where deals and alliances are announced daily, this latest joint venture stood out for its scope. Experts said it appeared to signify a further meshing of Internet services into the mainstream media.

"This is an important day for the whole (Internet) industry," Shelby Bonnie chief operating officer of the San Francisco-based Cnet said.

While the Cnet stock soared on news of the deal, ending the day up $12.125 to $45.125, shares of competing Internet services appeared to respondpositively as well. Yahoo! Inc, the most popular Internet directory, jumped $8.50 to $117.875, Excite Inc was up $3.25 to $65, Infoseek Corp advanced $4 to $27.25 and Lycos Inc was up $3.75 at $54, all on Nasdaq. "Clearly it is an endorsement of the fact that media companies are taking the Internet as something that is not only mainstream but strategic," said Hambrecht & Quist analyst Daniel Rimer.

As for the direct benefits to Cnet, Rimer said the association with NBC would dramatically help that company promote the Snap! brand in a field growing more crowded with competitive services offering a similar product.

"It has transformed them overnight," he said.

Cnet (http://www.cnet.com), an online publisher of technology news popular among many Internet users launched the Snap! (http://www.snap.com) Internet search service last year. Although Cnet claims Snap is the "most powerful way to organised and find anything on the Internet," it has struggled to build brand recognition and distinguish itself fromits competitors, most which make similar claims about being the best way to make sense of the world wide web.

On Tuesday Cnet officials said they recognised branding was key to standing out from the competition, and that NBC could help make Snap more of a household name.

They said they were still reviewing ways to jointly promote Snap, but expected a big component of the deal to be advertisements on NBC programmes.

"We now intend to use NBC's enormous promotional power to outbrand our competitors," Cnet chairman Halsey Minor said.

Under the agreement, NBC has the option to boost its stake in Snap! to 60 per cent at a cost of $38 million. Cnet officials said they expect the joint venture will eventually go public as a separate entity, although they gave no time frame for when that might happen.

NBC officials said they were keen on getting further into the Internet business, which they see as comparable to where the television business was in the 1950s. They estimated that about 20 per cent ofAmerican households are surfing the Internet, but are confident that number will grow. "We have faith in the Internet business becoming mass media," Wright said. "But it depends on the growth of US households on the Internet."