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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Captain Jack who wrote (68040)	9/29/1999 7:46:00 AM
From: Kenya AA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

AltaVista's Middle-aged IPO DailyTish September 29, 1999 by Tish Williams AltaVista is standing sideways, sucking in its gut and crying into a full-length mirror. With heaving gasps, the phlegm torrent begins. Damn those Digital idiots! Screw those Compaq jerkoffs! Staring over its vast rolling love handles and an extra half-forehead where there used to be a raven pompadour, AltaVista could kill somebody. Tuesday CMGI announced plans to file for the big show in October. If all goes as planned the Internet stock dresser-upper could take AltaVista public as soon as February 2000. A day late and a dollar short Why the five month lead time, in a period of blazing six-week-turnaround IPO returns? (And admittedly skin-welting belly flops…) CMGI is going to have to fit AltaVista for a sports coat, bleach its grey teeth and reintroduce it to one of the most finicky groups of bachelorettes around. No problem, snaps CMGI, tousling AltaVista's thinning hair. But it's easy for hotshot CMGI to be super-confident. With its trim figure, sterling track record and convertible beemer, it's never had a problem with the banking ladies. Still, can its egotism penetrate the thick layer of self-loathing that bulges out of AltaVista's Hawaiian shirt, just above its Gap beltline? Corporate parents make the man. Late at night, drenched in sweat, AltaVista remembers the good old days. Back in 1996 it was the hottest thing around. A search engine that could blow Yahoo away, with Yahoo sidetracked on the cash-sucking, impossible goal of building a new-media empire. Onlookers took off their glasses time and time again to look AltaVista up and down, sure that search engines would always attract surfers first. What a hunk. Tons of traffic. Stacked technology. A lean look, despite its confused, slothful parents. With Digital in with Wall Street, everyone was sure AltaVista would seize a spot in the IPO pantheon. But the clock kept on ticking, and IPO rumors swirled but never stuck. And then came Compaq. Oh man, this didn't look good. AltaVista was continually upgrading its features, but maybe it couldn't turn itself into a portal player after all. It probably wouldn't get the cash infusions or technology boosts from Compaq needed to keep pace with the studs. Still superfast, still popular, it was turning into the Rob Lowe of the Internet world--dashing, on the edge and in danger of imploding. Bad influence. Finally Compaq blew to bits and CMGI picked up the steaming hunk of shrapnel that now makes up AltaVista. Just as fast. More capabilities. But its self-esteem is as shrunken and withered as a 13-year-old girl's as she stares at airbrushed semi-nude shots of the previously obtainable Sabrina the teenage witch looks. AltaVista, we feel for you. We're rooting for you. But we're not sure just yet if we'd buy you. Sorry man, that's just the breaks. Tish Williams is senior writer/editor at UPSIDE.