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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: damniseedemons who wrote (17699)	3/1/1998 10:30:00 PM
From: Jay Rommel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Sal, I heard some rumor that they (MSFT) are going to give away software at the Vxtream shows ... I remember being invited to a show last year by MSFT and they gave away a full version of office 97 professional ... MSFT gave away software, t-shirts, hats, caps ... The show + the giveaways must have cost them 100K ... I guess it's what you call Marketing expense ... huh ... I'm shocked that MSFT hasn't bought Michael Jordan yet ... The Bulls are only paying him 30+ million/year ... I'm sure Billy boy Gates can afford to give him a cool Billion to say some kind things about MSFT ....

To: damniseedemons who wrote (17699)	3/4/1998 8:59:00 AM
From: Reginald Middleton	Respond to of 24154

<In short, I think Barksdale (and his team) deserves the blame for Netscape's woes. And its too bad that nobody realizes it.> MGMT is alwasy responsible for the performance of the company. Anything else is an excuse. <1) Trying to make Netscape get too big too fast. Many aspects here, and its much more than simply hiring too fast and letting expenses get out of control. Netscape stretched itself too thin while trying to build a very wide-range of products. While focusing on becoming "the next Microsoft," they lost focus> They did let expenses get out of control. They also failed to execute on the whole product approach efficiently. They should have bundled their partner's other products on a cash neutral basis, thereby delivering a whole product to the market without draining resources. This is exactly what MSFT does. When economies of scale ramp up, the partners are then carved out. <2) "To Hell with the client and consumer markets, we're gonna be an enterprise server company!" Unfortunately, it was the client that put Netscape on the map. Microsoft's "Free IE" notwithstanding--Netscape virtually abandoned their client, and as a result, quickly lost marketshare.> By far thier biggest mistake. The borwser should have always been free. With the momentum they had they could have stayed ahead of MSFT much longer. wiht the increased site revenue and traffic, they could have offered cross marketing incentives in the same fashion that MSFT did, and would have had much more strength on the server side. Instead they tried to please the sell side of the street with short term earnings instead of burning capital in order to gain unassailable market share. <3) To go with numbers 1 and 2, we have Netscape's lack of a definitive strategy. First its client, then server, then messaging/groupware, then tools, then Java, back to server, exploiting their website, client again with no Java, E-commerce...???> See my first response. <4) Antagonizing Microsoft. Barksdale let Netscape have a deathwish from a beginning, by effectively saying things like: "We're gonna put Microsoft out of business. Our browser is going to be the new computing platform, rendering Microsoft Windows irrelevant. Etc., etc., etc." What purpose did all the trash-talking serve except to rally the troops in Redmond?> Barksdale tried to get publicity for free, which he did. MSFT would have went after him anyway, so this was justified.