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

To: Sam who wrote (10507)	7/2/1998 1:57:00 AM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

I can't wait for the Web real-estate bust. AOL milked three electronic-trading partners for $75 million Tuesday, in return for premier placement on what it calls its most heavily trafficked area. Analysts' and pundits' jaws hit the floor over the figure. Is boffo placement on AOL worth that much? Will that investment really pay off? With Excite's stock price hitched up another 7 bucks and change, mimicked by Yahoo, Wall Street had better hope so. This is a real-estate boom, like LA in the '80s, as investors rush to snap up precious Web spaces before they're all gone. And when the bust comes, boy will buyers be pissed. I remember watching every square inch in a 45-mile radius of Los Angeles get paved in the 1980s and turned into a gigantic salmon-pink super strip mall. Now I get to watch every nook and cranny of AOL and Yahoo get flattened and made inhabitable for online content providers looking for a little traffic. How can one person be so lucky? What a wonderful phenomenon. Once hysteria takes over the normally sane individual, he or she can see no end to the Mt. Everest-like climb of prices and importance of real estate. The million-dollar plot of gopher holes in a far off suburb, with a view of Taco Bell mansions across a dusty, tumbleweed-filled canyon seems like a good "investment." Frothing saliva, the buyers know (they can just tell) that their Spanish-tiled hacienda will fetch a magnifico $2 million in a few scant years. No senor. Instead the real estate market crumbles. The heady enthusiasm wilts. Those huge down payments sag. The Don Johnson pink blazer with no undershirt can't hide the pain. Then the bankers come. Not that AOL's the bad guy. What it's doing is outrageously good for its bottom line, which could use a cash boost to reduce its sagging. AOL is selling off property in three- and five-year deal increments and getting much-need liquid cashola. Just like the vacant lots, the square, post-war mom and pop shops and 1930s ranches, AOL's space is an underutilized resource. Get an eager buyer ready to fix it up with a snazzy new service--some skylights, gold fixtures and a fake waterfall into the Jacuzzi--and AOL's halfway to Times Square standing. Until a reality tremor rumbles through the industry. Internet or bust! London, Paris, AOL Tish Williams, Editor, Upside Today --- Sam, Don't be so smug in your rockers. One of these days ... like Ralph Kramden used to say.