I am still hoping that The AOL deal will come apart because of shareholder's voting against the deal or another bidder comung in. I think Barksdale has done a disservice to stockholders.
Interesting article on This subject from Smartmoney:
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--A typical Silicon Valley
funeral. Employees turn in their badges and stroll across the
street from one concrete bunker and into the next startup.
Who could blame the 2,000 plus workers at Netscape
(NSCP) for not wanting to hold on, as friends at other,
cooler startups enjoy soaring stock options amid the Summer
of Love for the Internet market. EBay (EBAY) is at 183
Tuesday morning, Amazon (AMZN) is down a bit at 211.
Like a stunned goat, stopped in its tracks, Netscape is
holding at 40. Lots of other companies with less to offer than
Netscape, like EarthWeb (EWBX), have seen better in this
market for many months.
For letting those weary rollerbladers go free, and for trying
to place the company's assets in good hands, Netscape's
management is to be commended.
But we can't forgive the company for selling out the Net.
When we recommended Netscape in our portfolio of Internet
stocks this past August, it was as a company that we
believed still held tremendous promise, because it was
holding all the cards. This was the Internet company.
It had a browser that is still preferred over Microsoft's
(MSFT) by most businesses, according to a recent survey by
market research firm Zona Research, and which has held its
own on the Web against brutal competition from the
monopolists in Redmond. It had e-commerce software that
could compete in an expanding marketplace where really big
companies like Cisco Systems (CSCO) are selling billions
of dollars in goo ds. We didn't think much of its attempts to
become a portal site, but we also thought that that was a
good herring for the yokels who buy Internet stocks.
Apparently, we were more bullish than Netscape's
executives on the company's future. Was it really necessary,
though, to end a four year struggle by sleeping with the
enemy? In our minds we imagined plenty of exit strategies
for Netscape should the company decide to throw in the
towel.
An intelligent idea would have been a purchase by a major
Inter net Service Provider, such as the UUNet division of
MCI WorldCom (WCOM), which currently has 70,000
business Internet accounts, $1.6 billion in revenue from the
Internet for the first nine months of this year and already
owns the business Internet customers that America Online
(AOL) used to own and that Netscape tried so hard to woo.
Better yet would have been a sale to At Home (ATHM),
which seems to us to be rapidly signing up disillusioned
subscribers of a certain Virginia-based company to its cable
modem service, and which anyway has a larger market cap
than Netscape.
Instead, Netscape has given away its browser, the very thing
that got everyone so enthused about the Net in the first place,
to a private club, Losers Online. America Online embodies
many of the qualities for which Microsoft is most admired:
Its products are terrible; it treats its customers like garbage;
and like Microsoft, it dreams of owning everything in
cyberspace so as to exact a fee for each mouse click. That
Netscape shou ld crumble is sad, but sadder still, and rather
pathetic, is its turning over the heart and soul of the Internet
to a shop whose craven instincts are inimical to everything
for which the company has labored so long.
Think about it and you'll realize that we've gone back in time
four years, back before the Net craze. Netscape doesn't exist.
Microsoft is unquestioned in the market for software that
runs computers. The Internet is identified not with a thrilling
global network that is breaking down the b arriers between
peoples, a web, but with private online services like
America On Hold. All we have left now are these stupid
Internet stocks.
Stunning, isn't it? So we'll be cashing in our chips; we've
been handed a nice exit strategy, and we have no intention of
tagging along for the ride. There are a lot of smart people at
Netscape, and they'll go on to do interesting things. A former
senior executive of Netscape, since divested of his Netscape
shares, tells us we're too harsh in our criticisms, and that
we're missing the "inner beauty" of this deal. "Why couldn't
AOL become a real "open" Internet service provider?" he
offers, and in so doing bring Netscape back to its roots, as
the technology visionary for the Internet and the Web.
Perhaps. In the meantime, we see a few things happening as
a result of this merger. Lest you think otherwise, the current
developments should make the government's lead attorney
David Boies and his crew prosecute Bill Gates more
vigorously, as they prove the ex tent of damage Microsoft's
practices have inflicted upon Netscape's bottom line.
In the confusion left by Netscape's wrenching departure,
there will be a renewed interest in building applications of
all sorts that run on top of the Internet, but that cannot be
called a "browser." Normal people who don't like the look
of either AOL or Microsoft will go looking for alternative
means of access to the World Wide Web, probably giving a
small lift to non-Microsoft devices. But for those looking for
an alte rnative to AOL on the Net, the sad truth is there isn't
any, except Microsoft.
Without the ticket-splitting influence of Netscape, the World
Wide Web belongs to Bill Gates. Game over.
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