Netscape May Offer Navigator For Free techweb.com
Well, this headline has been batted around for so long, it's got to come true sooner or later. This piece has more analysis on today's, er, surprising news than I've seen elsewhere. In general, it doesn't sound pretty. I got no idea what all this merger charging stuff means, or if the collection of pieces makes any sense.
Jeff Matthews, general partner at Ram Partners, in Greenwich, Conn., said the loss could affect channel programs."They are going to be in retrench mode," said Matthews."It's pretty bad. There is no bright spot in this announcement. Bill Gates brewed a strong cup of coffee for these guys, and it is full of anthrax. What did anyone expect? Microsoft gives this stuff away and has $9 billion in cash in the bank and a monopoly in the operating system market."
Tsk, tsk, the M word again. Anthrax is a bit of an escalation from Scott McNealy's poisoned Java, but given the old "Embrace and Demolish " slogan, I won't debate it.
"We plan to address these issues immediately. To accelerate our transition to an enterprise software company, we plan to streamline our business to focus on key enterprise market opportunities and eliminate unrelated expenses. We believe this streamlining combined with our fourth quarter investments -- including the acquisition of Actra Corporation and Kiva Software for electronic commerce applications, and the continued build-out of our enterprise sales and support infrastructure -- position us to be an industry leader in 1998 in the growing e-commerce, messaging, service provider applications, and custom Internet solutions markets."
Brave talk, I wonder what the merged-in companies think of this, and their NSCP shares. Maybe they still look good, relative to their independent standing, though I wonder about GE and Actra. Anyway, hope springs eternal, and Jan. 13 is just a week and a day away.
Cheers, Dan. |
