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Technology Stocks : CheckFree (CKFR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TLindt who wrote (1820)	2/20/1998 1:55:00 PM
From: TLindt	Respond to of 8545

So In addition that's why that guy from BofA would shoot Gates with a Silver Bullet... Being the largest paper based payments processor outside of the Federal Reserve... Sitting across the table from somebody who's telling you, 'We're gonna do it for FREE!', would cause me to go looking for a Silver Bullet too if I were Him....... Kinda destroys and entire business model....and revenue stream.

To: TLindt who wrote (1820)	2/20/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: Charlie Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8545

T: Well said, in a rambling sort of way. Somebody once said that the difference between tragedy and comedy is that in a tragedy the protagonist sees everything around him (her) going to hell and is powerless to do anything about it. In a comedy, the protagonist sees everything going to hell and doesn't give a shit! In the case of MSFDC vs. CKFR, we'll know well ahead of time if your scenario is playing out, and we'll have time to exit gracefully. The writing was on the wall for Netscape as early as the fall of 1996, when Gates started giving away Explorer. We'll have time. Charlie

To: TLindt who wrote (1820)	2/23/1998 7:04:00 AM
From: Roger Bass	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8545

TL, some thoughts on the different MSFDC and CF models: It may be that MSFDC will be processing payments for free to CF billers. It may also be that only MSFDC billers will be present on those banks' billpay sites, which would of course undermine the value to consumers of those services. Any clues on this ? I have doubts that the 'Netscape' scenario applies. You can't compare giving software away (zero variable costs) with running a transaction processing operation (substantial variable costs, somewhere). They may be prepared to accept losses for a while, but they would have no assurance that their competitive situation later would allow them to recoup this investment. Meanwhile, in the Quicken model (I think) the customer, or the customer's bank, is paying for the payments. This is effectively the same from the biller's point of view, as a payment from a CheckFree bank. So if an MSFDC biller finds that they are receiving a lot of payments from Quicken users, or CheckFree bank customers, they may wonder why they are paying MSFDC for the payments. Roger