Excite's Been Mighty Dull Since The AtHome Merger.

Byline: Pete Barlas, Investor's Daily

A year later, Excite At-Home Corp. seems to be stuck in neutral in the race to capture eyeballs on the Web. Since being bought by cable Net-access providerAtHome, a merger announced in January 1999 and completed in May, Web portal Excite has lost ground to main rivals America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. In January 1999, market tracker Media Metrix Inc. said Excite had 18 million unique visitors vs. 29 million for Yahoo and 37 million for AOL. In December, the numbers were 28, 42 and 54 million, respectively. It might be ready to act,though. Analysts say Excite plans to re-launch its site in March. And the company has said it will issue a separate tracking stock for its portal business by September. Both moves can't come toosoon, analysts say. (Excite AtHome refused several attempts to get comments for this story.) "There's no question that Excite has lost …