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Technology Stocks : INFOSEEK (GO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RocketMan who wrote (3116)	3/16/1998 8:20:00 PM
From: Schiz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9343

<However, all search engines -- all -- are way overpriced. The reason is that (1) they are relatively simple to build and populate, (2) they use no propriatary technology, and (3) the switching cost to the consumer is zero> The outrageous valuations on all search engines is a little scary. SEEK is probably slightly undervalued when compared to the others. If the whole internet stock craze slows down we could see an across the board correction. I'm not saying this is going to happen just that the possibility is there. The potential great rewards that will more than likely come to the investors who buy into the company that is the leader 5 years from now is worth a premium in most investors eyes. This premium results in added risk. As far as the proprietary technology, SEEK has a patent for relevancy ranking when searching multiple databases. I think lcos has a patent for their spidering technology. I also think that the core search technology for seek (and maybe others-yhoo uses alta vista) is licensed from another company all together. Switching is easy and the best way (imo) to increase traffic is the proper locating of links to the homepage. Although this is useless if your service sucks and people don't return. I like seek the best as a search engine. Stock quotes is yhoo. I like the speed yhoo offers. Just my 2 cents. I'm not currently in seek, looking for a dip. If it doesn't happen, I guess I'll miss the boat.

To: RocketMan who wrote (3116)	3/17/1998 12:38:00 AM
From: Stephen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9343

Rocketman... Whilst I might agree with the overvaluation part of your comment, based on accounting fundamentals, I don't really agree with your rationale. Good search engines are not easy to build ... a la Microsoft's problems and Excite's search engine (sorry xcit fans), and much of the tech is proprietary. Further whilst factually correct regarding people switching ... having the 'eyeballs' first makes it much more difficult for new or lesser players in the search engine field ... though if Microsoft use their 'bundling' methods this would have a significant impact!.