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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Fulop who wrote (24547)	6/30/1999 6:41:00 AM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 41369

Morning Report Wed Jun 30 10 That Fell: Mining The ISDEX Percentages By Steve Harmon Senior Investment Analyst internet.com "Where Wall Street Meets The Web" Au contrare. Not my typical investment style but when you see some market leaders down in the bottom 10 of the 50 stocks in ISDEX it makes me wonder if the percentages mean anything. Maybe they do. Case in point: DoubleClick (NASDAQ:DCLK - news) . Since June 16 it's off -2%, which taken in that timeframe may not seem substantial. But let's back out and take a wider look. DCLK hit the skids on rumors of the now confirmed deal between Compaq's AltaVista unit and CMGI (NASDAQ:CMGI - news) . AltaVista accounts for about half of DCLK's revenue. The fear was that CMGI, with its own ad properties, would bump DoubleClick off AltaVista. Two things that may benefit DoubleClick here: 1) the agreement between DoubleClick and AltaVista is for 3 more years and 2) CMGI has a stable of startups that may use DoubleClick if they are deployed on AltaVista. So in the weird science of the Web DoubleClick may benefit from the CMGI deal with AltaVista. 3 years is a long time on the Internet also. Next Infoseek (NASDAQ:SEEK - news) . It's housecleaning time here. Go.com is a better brand, bring on board some marketing guru to head this one up, same as Steve Case (of Proctor & Gamble fame before AOL) heads up AOL. It's a marketing war, not technology war. Go.com needs a heavy injection of "fun," the kind that drives Yahoo, eBay and others. Still, I have to believe that SEEK looks undervalued to the Mouseketeer potential. That the long battle ahead is driven by TV to Web and back. Something should happen in the Magic Kingdom. AOL (NYSE:AOL - news) . Just sits there. At $106 per share and $114 billion market cap. If AOL was sold in parts it could fetch much more. Most users globally, most cash, most earnings, most well-known brands. I think the street waits on a cable deal to ignite the fire here. Go broadband via satellite AND coaxial AND twisted pair on DSL. Let's see the 50 stocks in ISDEX since June 16:

To: James Fulop who wrote (24547)	6/30/1999 6:42:00 AM
From: Mike Torrence	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

Steve Harmon (who has a thread on SI) has mentioned a few times recently that AOL's stock performance has and will continue to be hampered by the lack of a cable deal. Case and co. appear to be touching all the bases with this one exception. It is my hope that AOL management has it's eye on the votes which are about to be taken in a number of cities across the country (LA and SF among them)regarding open access. Despite the FCCs apparent desire to let the cable companies monopolize the use of this electronic infrastructure these cities may well vote to require open access. If that happens I would hope that Case gets on the phone with Armstrong because the price of access will have dropped significantly. Then Armstrong and his colleagues have a choice: 1. Delay and continue to fight it out in the courts (expensive, everyone loses) or 2. Begin negotiating price with the other internet providers. I hope (there's that word again) that AOL's management is not simply digging its heels in and trying to effect open access through its lobbying efforts in Washington. I applaud AOL's decision to use every available option to deliver it's content but it's obvious to me we need a cable deal and I hope (three times now) that they're (AOL management) watching these large urban access decisions carefully and act sooner rather than later once these votes have been taken. Mike