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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Stept who wrote (27906)	8/5/1999 1:14:00 PM
From: John A. Stoops	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Jon, You are correct in saying that a free internet service from MSFT will not kill AOL. Not right away.But I do believe in 12 months it will be possible to take a 50% share of the current AOL base if MSFT is committed to that objective. It sounds like they are. Better yet, they have hit the AOL stock hard on a simple Press release. What companies say are often interpreted as more important than what they will actually do in the short run. AOL, IBM, Oracle and Sun need to think hard before they start to throw rocks or learn to aim better.They are toast. John

To: Jon Stept who wrote (27906)	8/5/1999 1:29:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Free ISPs alone are definitely not a threat to AOL as some have been around (FreeI.net) and others are just entering (Brand 3 and Net Zero) some with unique models. None of these have been seen by the industry as a threat to AOL. None of these have money to advertise widely. How many people do you think have heard of these free ISPs? I'm a techie and a pretty heavy internet user but the only one of those three that I've heard of is NetZero. What kind of trust would someone have of someone they've never heard of who claims to want to give them something that they're currently paying for for free? Aren't we always warned that these sort of something-for-nothings are usually a scam? But everyone has heard of Microsoft. I set my teacher brother-in-law up with NetZero and he's really happy with it. To him 12 months * $20/month = $240/year is a lot of money. I had planned on setting my mother up with it, ditching Mindspring, but now I'll probably wait to see what happens with Microsoft. To her $240/year's a lot of money, too. People that use AOL are not accessing it as an ISP as in Free ISP service... they are paying for it because they like the ease of use and the features that are found no where else on the internet. You mean like the ease of having to follow special instructions all over the web of how to access a site if you're using AOL's specially-screwed-up version of IE?

To: Jon Stept who wrote (27906)	8/5/1999 2:28:00 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Jon, I have been a happy aol stockholder since the end of November 1998. I sold my entire position recently @ 124 (which gave me a stunning 170% return in 7 months) because of changes in aol's fundamentals, and posted the following rationale on the G&K thread earlier this week: I portrayed aol as a "sticky portal" a few months back. But in order to apply the stickum, they have to get the newbies to come into their lair. This will be a slow motion battle, and the ammo will be wads of money. As I see it, * AOL will continue to spam the newbies with cd's and free trials. * Mr. Softee will give away $400 rebates towards a new computer (which is a free low end computer) for MSN sign ups. * AOL's adoption rate will decline, though their retention rate will still be high. But their business model will be severely damaged. I don't think content is an issue any more. With msn as an isp and Yahoo as your home page, you don't give up much in terms of content or ease of use vs. aol. In that post, I didn't even factor in the impact of dell and gateway giving away free isp along with their computers, which will hammer away at aol from the other side while they are confronting msft. It is hard to imagine that aol will emerge unscathed from the titanic forces at play against them. And once their growth slows, the market will really turn on them. Frank

To: Jon Stept who wrote (27906)	8/5/1999 9:24:00 PM
From: JP Sullivan	Respond to of 74651

I am not convinced that it is time to hammer the nails in the AOL coffin. Neither am I. Not in the short term, anyway. Seventeen million subscribers do not evaporate overnight. But in the longer term, I'm not so sure about AOL's ability to thrive. AOL makes it very easy for users to get online, and no ISP has yet come close to duplicating that. This is not something difficult to achieve, and that's the problem. I bet there are a host of bright young things out there, who, if given the right amount of support (mainly $$$), can match and better AOL's ease of use. Remeber when the internet took off in 1997? And people were saying AOL is dead because, well, there is so much more out there and their are other service providers and AOL was considered toast. AOL would have died had it not opened itself up by offering access to the Internet. (In the same vein, MSFT would be in deep trouble now if not for Bill's (in)famous "embrace and extend" strategy.) AOL's success today is because of the Internet. Can you imagine AOL surviving if it is shut out from the Internet? Compuserve was a stodgy service that opened up too late and eventually ended up being bought out by AOL. I was a Compuserve subscriber for many years. I was there only because there wasn't a better alternative (the software bulletin boards, mainly). But as soon as Web sites began sprouting up like mushrooms and they offered the information I needed, it was good-bye and good riddance Compuserve. The opposite happened.... more people wanted to get on and participate on AOL because, possibly in part, it was so much easier than the internet. I believe most people join AOL as a means to get onto the Internet in a hassle-free manner. Some of the less techno-savvy subscribers probably identify AOL as the Internet. In essence AOL is a gateway to the Internet. If MSFT delivers the same ease and features and then throws in that attention-getting "free service", I'm wondering how soon before AOL's balance sheet starts bleeding. And the really interesting thing is AOL has not even begun to pull out their ammunitiion... You have my attention here. What kind of ammunition does AOL have? The DOJ? What are its alternatives to fight off the competitor from hell (well, okay, Redmond)?