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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (17438)	12/2/1999 1:56:00 PM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

>> Getting involved with productivity apps is futuristic I'm not so sure ... these apps already exist and are pretty darned good ... although I would have to agree that maturity is 18-24 months out. Interestingly enough, several of the limiting factors in web-based apps (bandwidth and server QoS) are within @Home's ability to control ... that is to say, they are uniquely positioned to offer good service via server-based apps because they control the infrastructure. >> ATHM must work with what they have rather than chase after windmills. >> The Excite exercise demonstrated what not to do. I suggest that these windmills are somewhat more tangible than Don Quixotes' and considerably different in kind as well. If you line up the service and cost factors, you'll see that the web-desktop ROI is worth, what?, 1000x that of Excite? Excite is just another portal ... Ho hum. Portals are dead in a world where your desktop lives on the web. Your default experience changes focus from "portal" to "desktop". The whole playing field shifts ... the "environment of greatest default value" changes scope. Look at your screen at this moment. Suppose you use Excite, or Yahoo, or whatever as a portal. Notice that it operates within a larger environment ... the desktop ... owned and operated by Microsoft. You do this because you interoperate web information with productivity apps ... Word, Excel, email, etc. Consider what happens to this setup when the desktop is free and web-based ... leverage over the portal goes to the desktop provider. I'm talking trends, not absolutes. >> ATHM can provide the environment so that other companies can leverage the ideas you suggest Granted. ATHM may decide to stay at the ISP/carrier layer. T's attitudes bear on this. I posit the customer getting their desktop service as part of their ATHM service plan ... I do not presuppose how that will be technically or organizationally arranged ... it may be delivered in any number of ways ... acquisition, licensing, or the equivalent of a button deal ... even so degenerate as a "My Desktop" link on the Excite home page. I do believe that @Home's infrastructure QoS control would go wasted if they didn't move the desktop web-servers out father toward the user ... they are in a unique position to achieve this promptly. Which is worth more to you? The information within the scope of your desktop (e.g., all your files), or the information within the scope of the web (or, e.g., AOL?). A case can be made that @Home as a provider of a complete desktop solution + portal ought to get a subscriber valuation on the order of AOL's ... that's a pretty big delta in market cap. >> Trying to put that all under one roof is too much. I understand how you could see this given ATHM's + Excite's execution to date. However, in the long-run this is a failed and disproven position. Consider the evolution of desktop software toward greater and greater integration ... from more diversity in providers to less diversity in providers. Don't you think the end-game MUST be that you buy ALL your service from one provider?