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

To: blankmind who wrote (28005)	8/7/1999 1:26:00 AM
From: ed	Respond to of 74651

well, the way I see MSN, AOL, and Yahoo is as follow: As you know for the TV industry, you have ABC, CBS, NBC and many local stations, and all their programs are free to the consumers ; Besides that, we have cable TV, which the consumers need to pay a monthly fee to view the programs.Just ask yourself why you want to pay a monthly fee to watch the programs offered by cable TV ? Because they offer many special contents which the free TV networks do not offer.Such as, the playboys, the movies, the CNBC, the dicovery channel ...etc. My point is , the paid ISP and free ISP providers can exist together. The ISPs actually provide an audince where the companies had a chance to sell their products to the consumers, so the large the people have access to the ISPs, the more valuable the ISP is , as companies make ads have more chance to sell their products through the net. That is why the future trend for the ISP is free access. However, the free access does not mean free to enjoy all the programs offered by the ISP. You can have pay to view movie net under MSN, pay to enjoy in the Microsoft Music net, pay to read in the MSN library net, ....etc , of course certain programs can be free to the consumers , just like the local TV stations, all these will make very big money for the ISP, much more than the regular monthly subscription fee. So, who will win in the internet business ? Well, no one will win, it will be just balanced power, just look at CBS, NBC, ABC ...etc . But at the very beginning , AOL will feel the pain, because some of its current subscribers will switch to MSN , but as AOL also switch to the free access business model, a balance will eventually reach !!!!!

To: blankmind who wrote (28005)	8/7/1999 3:07:00 AM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

>> for instance, AOL, Mindspring, AT&T, MSN, etc... are all ISP's which offer basically the same thing. As an ex-long term aol holder, I have to differ with you on that assessment, blankmind. AOL is an isp, but it is also a content provider extraordinaire, and a stick portal. Another differentiator is their proprietary gui, which is regarded as the easiest interface to learn for newbies. But free will win over features. … mon avis, Frank

To: blankmind who wrote (28005)	8/7/1999 4:40:00 PM
From: larry	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

-Those feedbacks basically answered all your questions. -I have said all along that YHOO! will be the company that sometime in the future will have the ability to compete with MSFT for net dominance. It won't happen in the next several years, however, its long term potential is great. But YHOO!'s stock is spotting a tremendous P/E or P/S, which is guaranteed to dip when rate goes up. -Sure if MSFT will offer free service without banners and any other tricks, AOL will feel heavy pressure but it will still be there. To compare AOL with NCSP is just not right, since NCSP has never spotted a market cap of close to 200 billion. Anyway, we can argue about the AOL issue for days without any side winning. The valuation on this issue has been very controversial and will still be so in the near future. -talking about gorilla stocks, MSFT & CSCO top the list. QCOM and PCS are little gorillas. YHOO! is the future gorilla but with volatile nature. DELL and AOL was gorillas in the past. I can never understand why INTC needs to shoot up after it missed the quarter and only painted a decent future for the second half of the year. It does not make sense. larry