Responding from beta land so bear with glitch city. The editor here is on trial.
they showcased the company's increasing marketing successes, wherein, for example 10%-11% of registered Excite users, who have received a marketing e-mail, have been converted to @Home Network subscriptions;
Is that all?
and they bragged about their biggest selling point of all: speed. '
What has that to do with Excite!? I'm not excited.
'If you build an engine that's 10 times faster, it's still a car,' explained Jermoluk. 'If you make one that's 100 times faster, it's not a car anymore. It's a plane.'
If you got $6 billion in dead weight in your hold, how do you get off the runway? Sounds like Bell's bell is ringing for him and the Spruced Goose can't lift off. Specifically, what has Excite done for ATHM? I used to use Excite a lot, but now I never use it. It has evolved into a pig. Why didn't Jermo get another $6 billion and buy YHOO? He's a weakling. That's what I would done even if it meant arm stronging and whatever else it might take. Instead we got wishy-washy.
The FCC
In such a scenario, says the CEO, private investment in the
infrastructure would dry up, and consumers would suffer the most. 'Calls for open access from incumbent, dominant players in the data services industry are really attempts to scare off private sector investment and maintain the status quo,' reads one of the meeting's handouts. This status quo, it continues, 'constrains most of America to dial-up narrowband access which AOL dominates.'
Can anyone really believe this guy buys this hype? Is this the kind of guy you want leading what is expected to be one of the most important companies in the world? The comment is neither accurate nor does it portray what competitors would like him to believe. It sounds like the irrational, unfounded fear of the weakling.
Echoing Jermoluk, President George Bell insisted Tuesday that if there were to be a mandate for open access, the only people that would truly suffer for it would be the consumer.
But if that were the case, it makes one wonder: Why does
Excite@Home act more like an army under siege than one which is simply at war?
How ironic was Jermoluke's answer when asked whether Excite@Home would consider doing a deal with America Online if approached: 'We would absolutely consider doing a deal with them,' he said, adding that 'there's a lot of territory' still to be covered on the net. It is conceivable that, someday soon, Excite@Home may find it no longer has much of a choice.
The author has a better expressed understanding than the two
Armstrong puppets. You can't have a company led by a puppet. The next task is to get rid of Bell and rework excite!? into something that might be of value. ATHM is getting cleaned on the presentation front. They are not keeping up. They squandered all that dough for junk. That was Jermo's shot and it killed him. The bullet ricocheted off Amstrong's aegis.
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