Eddie,
I agree with much of what you say. The value of Lycos and Yahoo are not based on the abilities of their search engines. Instead, they have positioned themselves as media companies. Eyeballs, advertisements and E-commerce partnerships--that's what it will take for AV to become a valuable asset.
According to a recent report (http://fnews.yahoo.com/isdex/98/09/17/morning_980917.html), AV is not among the 20 most visited web sites or the top utilized search engines (which are Yahoo, Lycos, Excite and Infoseek). In addition, they are not really into the advertisement and e-commerce game (atleast at the level of Lycos and Yahoo). This will have to change immediately if AV is to become a real valuable operaion for them. Then, AV can spin off CPQ!
Personally, I really like Lycos's approach to this game. They are extremely aggressive, they know where the money is, and the have very lofty expectations. |
