Competition,Major customers,Shareholders and Competition.
Don't know,you may be right about performance of infrastructure vs non-infrastructure.I also do not know how good or bad their service is.Some interesting info on the company.
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.....'We believe that our services connect users to their products and services in a more targeted way than other services on the Internet, thereby better unlocking the power of electronic commerce. Beginning with only 3,000 questions a day in its first month of operation, Ask Jeeves answered over 1 million questions a day in April 1999, and has grown its unique user base from 425,000 in September 1998 to more than 1.9 million in March 1999. Ask Jeeves, at
ASK.COM, provides users with relevant answers to a wide range of questions such as "Is it raining in Paris?" to "Where can I comparison shop for cameras?" Our Corporate Question Answering Service is designed to improve customer satisfaction on Web sites, improve conversion rates of browsers to purchasers and reduce expensive support costs such as phone calls to call centers. Since
its introduction in October 1998, our Corporate Question Answering Service has been adopted by industry leaders including Compaq, Dell, Toshiba and WebTV....'
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PRINCIPAL STOCKHOLDERS
The following table sets forth information with respect to beneficial
ownership of our common stock as of April 30, 1999 and as adjusted to reflect the sale of common stock in this offering for:
- each person or entity known by us to beneficially own more than 5% of our outstanding common stock;
- each of our directors;
- each of the Named Executive Officer listed in the Summary Compensation Table; and
- all of our directors and executive officers as a group.
PERCENTAGE OF SHARES
NUMBER OF BENEFICIALLY OWNED
SHARES ------------------------
BENEFICIALLY BEFORE AFTER
NAME AND ADDRESS OF BENEFICIAL OWNER OWNED(1) OFFERING(1) OFFERING(2)
------------------------------------------ ------------ ----------- -----------
CPQ Holdings, Inc.(3)..................... 2,824,856 13.23%
529 Bryant Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
Entities affiliated with Highland
Capital Partners, Inc.(4)............... 2,310,322 10.82
Two International Place
Boston, MA 02110
Entities affiliated with
Institutional Venture Partners(5)....... 1,386,193 6.49
3000 Sand Hill Road
Building Two, Suite 290
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Roda Group Investment Fund I, L.L.C.(6)... 856,732 4.01
918 Parker Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
Roger A. Strauch(7)....................... 3,078,342 14.40
A. George ("Skip") Battle(8).............. 140,125 *
Garrett Gruener(9)........................ 2,820,881 13.21
Daniel J. Nova(4)......................... 2,310,322 10.82
Benjamin M. Rosen......................... 1,413,802 6.62
Geoffrey Y. Yang(5)....................... 1,386,193 6.49
Robert W. Wrubel(10)...................... 189,424 *
Daniel H. Miller(11)...................... 2,955,956 13.83
David C. Warthen(12)...................... 1,034,457 4.80
ALL EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND DIRECTORS
as a group (14 persons)(13)............. 13,934,553 63.94
=========================
Competition
"We have a number of competitors in both the consumer and the corporate areas. We compete with companies that maintain commercial Web sites for users,advertisers and electronic commerce partners. Competition could result in less user traffic to our public Web sites, which may lead to a reduction in advertising revenues, a price reduction for our advertising inventory, or a loss of market share. Any of these factors could adversely affect our business.
In addition, we face direct competition from companies that provide Web navigation services, including:
CATEGORY FOCUS COMPETITORS
---------------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------------------
Internet content Web navigation, content AltaVista Company, Excite, Inc., Inktomi
retrieval aggregation Corporation and Yahoo, Inc.
General purpose Connectivity, community America Online, Inc. and Microsoft
online-services content, e-commerce Corporation (Microsoft Network)
Connectivity portals Connectivity, broadband AT&T Corporation (AT&T Worldnet), @Home
content, community Corporation and MindSpring Enterprises,
Inc.
"Our Corporate Question Answering Service competes with a number of companies which are addressing the same need to improve automated or online customer service for corporate clients. While various companies are addressing this problem through a range of solutions, none competes directly with our approach.
The companies against whom we compete can be categorized as follows:
CATEGORY FOCUS COMPETITORS
---------------------- --------------------------- -------------------------------------------
Web-based Search, self-help problem Inktomi Corporation, Primus
resolution and expert Telecommunication Group, Inc., Inference
systems Corporation, Verity, Inc. and Web Answers
E-mail Automated response and Aptex Software, Inc., Brightware, Inc.,
intelligent routing Egain Communications Corp., Kana
Communications, Inc. and Mustang Software,
Inc.
Chat Forums and news groups Acuity Corporation, e-Share Technologies,
Inc. and FaceTime Communications, Inc.
Phone call Customer information Clarify, Inc., Siebel Systems, Inc.,
management and incident Vantive Corporation and Remedy Corporation
tracking
Our ability to compete depends on many factors, many of which are outside of our control. These factors include: the quality of content, the ease of use of online services and the timing and market acceptance of new and enhanced online services........" |
