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

To: Michael Collings who wrote (10322)	4/19/1998 2:44:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

>>There is absolutely nothing that can stop Microsoft from developing a superior product and then making a big media splash over it. Justice will not stop fair competition! Last time I looked Microsoft wasn't interested in categories they can't dominate. That's why everybody gets all excited and jumps up and down saying, "Just wait until Microsoft enters this business, Yahoo's toast." Well, Yahoo's not toast. Microsoft can't use Windows unfairly any longer. Without their platform lever, Microsoft is just another player. Every commerce deal, every paid placement will be scrutinized. Justice stopped Microsoft cold from buying Intuit in 1994, because the US feared Microsoft's control of online commerce. Do you think Justice is less diligent today? Importantly, Microsoft's credibility is in question, particularly by netizens. That's a big disadvantage for a content aggregator. Maybe others don't share my feelings in this regard, but blindly asking Microsoft any directions gives me the creeps. >>You act like 30 million in a quarter in revenues and a measly 5 cents in earnings (from operations) justifies a company with 386 employees to be worth over 5 billion dollars! 470 employees; 386 was 4th quarter. $30 million this quarter is outstanding. I don't care if the world says Yahoo is not worth $5 billion. The market says it is, and the price has been rising steadily. The market has been "over-pricing" Yahoo in naysayers eyes for sixteen months. The naysayers have been terribly (some tragically) wrong for a long time. That's gonna magically change? Someone is going to ring a bell? Alan Greenspan has a bell, but that's about it. >>You have your head in the clouds now William, you've been right on the stock for a long time but you should be flexible enough to realize that there is no way on earth that this puny little company is going to compete with the giants. I don't think my head is in the clouds. I worked for a certified media giant my entire career...the ABC Television Network. I headed the biggest sales division in the company, and billed well over $1 billion annually...selling advertising to the best-informed and shrewdest minds in the business. Senior people who were paid handsomely to spend money effectively. I also know the time and effort they will go to in order to incubate new marketing channels, and I know the discretionary money they have. It would spin your head around. Several clients have discretionary funds larger than Yahoo's current annual sales. I also know the limitations of giants. Long chains of command, budget nonsense, endless meetings and working groups, limited vision and mistrust of new initiatives, legacy business practices, protected markets, and destructive rivalries. Big business is not good outside core competencies. >>You are making a big error in underestimating Microsoft or any of the other big media giants from entering this arena. They can afford to sit back and wait for the internet to develop. Show me. "Coulda woulda shoulda" is not competition. They cannot afford to sit back, because this business is growing up around them very quickly. The principal players are establishing themselves. Money isn't the simple answer, either. Yahoo invested just $100,000 for nearly half of Yahoo Japan (carried on the books at cost, BTW). Now Yahoo Japan is the largest directory in Japan, and the most heavily-accessed website. I don't know what Yahoo's ownership in Yahoo Japan is worth, but it's the best investment any company could have made...and it was built solely on two things: Yahoo's brand, and Yahoo's business practices. quote.yahoo.co.jp Where's Sony? Where's Matsushita? Nowhere. Then there's Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Korea, Norway, the ASEAN countries, Sweden, the UK, and the US. Where's News Corp? Busy buying the Dodgers and a piece of the Lakers, to program a legacy media property. >>Yahoo has a measly 100 million and an extremely inflated stock in which to try to establish a lead. Yahoo has the lead. A very big lead. Unless they screw up, I say it's a lasting lead. >>Most of their ads are bought with barter or by fly by night upstart internet companies that will be gone from the universe in the next few years. Categorically untrue. You should know better.

To: Michael Collings who wrote (10322)	4/19/1998 4:16:00 AM
From: Marc Newman	Respond to of 27307

<< Most of their ads are bought with barter or by fly by night upstart internet companies that will be gone from the universe in the next few years.>> Michael, did you see this in thestreet.com? Toss in the porn ads and I think you might have a majority. ----------------- Equally skeptical is David Simons, managing director of Digital Video Investments, an institutional research firm. "There's going to be a blindside here," he says. "Only because there's absolutely no consideration of risk....All you here is the potential is limitless. To which I say, the pitfalls are bottomless." As a sign of how shaky the underlying business of the Internet is, Simons estimates that more than a third of all advertising on the Internet is supported by companies whose basic business can't support those ad expenditures. Instead, he says, they're being funded by money raised from venture capitalists, initial public offerings of stock and secondary offerings. When this ready capital runs out, he says, it could have a seismic effect on businesses such as Yahoo! and America Online (AOL:NYSE), which are banking on advertising income for future growth. They'll likely have to renegotiate multi-year advertising deals, Simons says. "It's almost going to be the Internet equivalent of the bad banking loans of the early 1990s," Simons says. "But unfortunately, there's no Federal Internet Advertising Insurance Corporation." ----------------