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To: Dan Hamilton who wrote (91)	9/10/2001 10:25:16 AM
From: Puck	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 787

I suspect that Paul Allen's decision to liquidate his Infospace holding has nothing to do with what perceptions or expectations he may have of Infospace's future and everything to do with personality conflicts he may have with current management. On its face, his choice to sell now makes hardly any sense unless you buy into the notion that Infospace will become involvent, which seems absurd to me. He managed to invest--what was it?--$400 million in Go2Net and then sell his stake for $21.7 million. Quite literally, he really has nothing to lose by hanging on. $21.7 million to him is less than one tenth of one percent of his empire, basically a rounding error. Why sell? Well, quite famously he sold his stake in AOL in 1994 (I think) because management wouldn't grant him more control of the company. AOL's stock price subsequently rose 40 or 50 times. AOL's potential played no role in his decision to sell in that case. It appear to have been purely emotional, and I certainly could understand why he would be angry at Infospace's management after Horowitz was denied being CEO, which he was justly in line for. I suspect he figured it was time for him to move on, which could be healthy for Infospace as well. I expect that this is a prelude for Savoy to depart from the Board of Directors in a quarter or two as well. (His investment decisions for Vulcan ventures have been less than sterling.) My only concern about Allen's departure from Infospace is what it might imply about Digeo's future. Could it signal that Digeo will be dissolved or could there be contingencies about Infospace's 20% stake in Digeo that could lead to Infospace's forced divestiture of that stake? I don't know at this point. Digeo has become nothing more than a dream to me as an Infospace investor because its potential revenue stream has been pushed out into the future so much. With meaningful revenues not expected now until 2003, I really could care less about it. I go so far as to say that Digeo became immaterial to Infospace a while ago economically, unless there are some synergies with Infospace's other business units I don't understand. This certainly is an excellent time for Infospace to be repurchasing shares.