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

To: Smart Investor who wrote (10797)	7/28/1998 4:32:00 PM
From: Yikes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

The argument that everyone can do what AOL is doing is flawed. Many people said that about WalMart for a long time, so far nobody can duplicate WalMart. In my opinion, AOl is in a business with higher entry barrier than WalMart. In the long run, AOL is in a very good position to take advantage of the internet "explosion". Please be more specific. I can only guess why WalMart cannot be duplicated. For one thing, it has store front all over the country. In order to duplicate it, someone would need to put up some serious cash. But K-Mart, Thrifty, Sav-On, Target, and Costco/Priceclub seem to compete with WalMark just fine. I go to whichever store that is closest to me. Is AOL really a business with higher entry barrier than WalMart? Could a portal company, say Yahoo!, team up with a ISP, say AT&T, to create another AOL-like service? What would be the difference between the clone and the original? Please explain. Yikes