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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kerry Phineas who wrote (8793)	3/13/1998 7:18:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

I did like the comment in the Fortune article, when the guy was quoted as saying 'Where else can you treat your customers like shit and they keep coming back'. Maybe thats where I missed the apparent 'Aol can't go wrong' attitude that the Street gives to, what I consider, the most overvalued stock, in America. I must admit though, that Case and Pitman seem to have it down pat on PR.

To: Kerry Phineas who wrote (8793)	3/13/1998 9:23:00 AM
From: steve lipson	Respond to of 13594

Micron, Micron, Micron, Micron... Give it a rest boys and girls. Too many of you bears keep hoping that AOL is a Micron-to-be. Here's a huge problem with that line of thinking: AOL has no Asian competitors set to drastically underprice them. AOL is not another Netscape either. NSCP ran into Microsoft, AOL ran right by Microsoft. And don't try to tell me that MCI-Yahoo and all the ISP's and telcos that aren't matching AOL's price increase will accomplish the same thing that Micron's competitors did. If it was so easy, why didn't AT&T and MSFT already do it. Until we start to see some customer movement to the contrary, I don't think you can argue that these me-too offerings with slightly lower prices are going to have any more effect than "Real Kola" has on the sales of Coke and Pepsi in the supermarkets. Look back at the query that started this thread. AOL appeared to be a lot more uncompetitive on price and Internet access quality a year and a half ago. Again, nothing happened other than they continued to grow. Apparently they have some other qualities that mainstream consumers value quite heavily. Until you or their competitors figure out what those are, you will continue to underestimate AOL and completely miss the boat. I would start to worry if I saw a competitor taking aim at what consumers want and articulating that, instead of taking aim at AOL. But if one or more of them doesn't figure it out in a hurry, the battle will already be over. Hurumph. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.