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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (8438)	3/15/1998 3:01:00 PM
From: TheBigB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

Netscape has said that it will compete with free email and other portal site offerings and will brand it's web site for consumers. Now that the market is valuing a portal more than the browser and Netscpae is sitting on a portal site - it will demand much more than 5 mIllion $ from YHOO when the deal expires in a month. Netscape should not be ruled out. They can sign a few deals and produce as effective a portal site as YHOO. They owe it to their shareholders. This means that YHOO can no longer depend on placement on Netscape's site for cheap. Netscape also has the option of either staffing up on an advertising sales force or using companies like DoubleClick etc. So it is not dependent of YHOO. In fact it can add the most shareholder value by supplanting Yahoo as the top site and it is remarkably well positioned to do so. It needs to acquire a search/cataloging engine and then provide free email. It can then go out and strike deals with ESPN, TV Guide, Reuters/Bloomberg and can mimic all that Yahoo has while begining to brand itself. They are essentially acknowleding that the mistake they committed is to not brand themselves as a consumer service and that they will begin doing so. Expect a relaunch of the nestcape site in the form of a Yahoo like site in the next few months - you will then have to contend with three solid competitors to YHOO : Netscape, AOL and Microsoft. I'm surprised you are writing of Netscape and not crediting them with the ability to see what is plain to you and me : competing with Yahoo is vital for them to increase shareholder value !