From today's WSJ - some comments on CPQ/Altavista from EP - he said CPQ has been approached about selling AV, but 'no deal'..
Did Compaq buy a portal in a poke? The fact that the current $8.5
billion stock valuation of Yahoo! Inc., an Internet "portal," is close to the
$9.6 billion that Compaq Computer Corp. paid for Digital Equipment
Corp. earlier this year has been noticed in many places -- including
Compaq's Houston headquarters. That's because one asset Compaq got
in the Digital purchase is Alta Vista, one of the first Internet search-engine
and directory sites. Several such sites, including Yahoo, have refashioned
themselves as portals to the Internet and investors have given them
sky-high market valuations.
Compaq Chief Executive Eckhart Pfeiffer disclosed in
a recent interview that his company has been
approached several times about selling or other
otherwise doing some deal involving Alta Vista. But he
says Compaq has declined all comers, since it has big
plans of its own for the site. Already, the keyboards of
some Compaq computers contain a special key that
takes users directly to the Alta Vista Web site. And
just this week, Compaq paid $3.5 million for the right
to the altavista.com domain name (Digital, believe it or
not, never owned the name; the site is found at
altavista.digital.com). Is Compaq entering the portal
business? "There are a lot of ways we can go," Mr. Pfeiffer says.
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