yeah, its possible. corporate business accounts seem to be what
drives shareholder value in internet issues these days. i guess
wall street has lost faith that the consumer market will ever go
black in the near term.
some additional thoughts for your consideration. i believe alot of
high tech stocks follow this path:
1. new technology developed by upstart regnegade.
2. company/market grows rapidly.
3. market attracts attention from numerous would-be competitors.
4. market saturation starts; no one breaks a profit.
5. business relationships/partnering is attempted to gain advantage.
6. final phase is consolidation: big fish eats smaller fish; little
fish die.
places to make investment money are limited to the final stages 5 & 6
because in technology, phases 1-4 occur so quickly that most dont
go public until this has already happened and are already operating
at a perpetual loss.
internet service providers are due for this final phase; i dont think
we're even close with search engine issues. but eventually they must
follow as well. there are way too many search engines out there with
few if any in the black. after all, they dont have a very proven
business model. i've never once paid for a search and i dont think
i've ever bought anything through their on-line ads.
if any of what i've said is true, then from the market capitalizations
of the high flyers (excite, lycos, infoseek), it is in fact excite
that would be most likely to succeed in phase 6. they are under
capitalized in comparison to the others. in other words, someone
could buy them cheap compared to a lycos and in my opinion, get a
far superior product. i have never been disappointed with excite
output. infoseek is also very good. yahoo again in my opinion doesnt
even qualify for the category because they themselves are more of a
categorizer than a search engine, which is a truly inefficient method
of getting what you're looking for.
sad to say but from personal experience, next to yahoo, lycos is the
worst search engine. all it has going for it is their street mapping
function but i dont think thats a unique feature anymore.
i've been thinking about dumping lycos in favor of excite but i'm
going to ride this trend first. no sense in cutting gains prematurely.
how about you? whats your take on this beast?
d |
