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Technology Stocks : IMON - Quoted from Barron's Corporate Reports -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Smith who wrote (215)	1/16/1999 10:49:00 PM
From: Louis Cornell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2220

If IMON is smart, they will refuse to grant an exclusive license to Microsoft or Netscape, but license it to both! But, given the company's small size, they may be forced into some kind of partnering agreement with one or both. Either way this product will be noticed by both companies.

To: Steve Smith who wrote (215)	1/16/1999 10:52:00 PM
From: Anthony@Pacific	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2220

Thanks and why is it that everybody always assume s I want the stock to crash and burn immediately..I just know that after any rises this coming week( if they can actually get it up) it will be a short if you dont see it soon it will be much lower very quickly...Here is your oppty to get out and make some money before we jump in with both feet ..right now I got a little toe in...

To: Steve Smith who wrote (215)	1/17/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2220

Thank you, Steve Smith... it is posts such as this that make it worthwhile navigating through this thread...

To: Steve Smith who wrote (215)	1/18/1999 4:57:00 AM
From: Jeff	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 2220

Steve smith asked, Could Microsoft use a product like WebZinger™ 6.00, the Internet's first ''Supra-Search Engine'', and bundle it with a future version of MSFT Explorer? This possible scenario could give MSFT a strong advantage over Netscape Navigator and also enable MSFT to enter the search engine market where YHOO currently dominates. ====== Some thoughts, trying to stick to the technology issues, would be interested in your feedback. I've downloaded the demo and tried it. Anyone with money at stake should do this. Sorry, this isn't all good.. 1) WebZinger is not a search engine, It uses existing search engines such as lycos and yahoo. This is confirmed by the .ini files in the WebZinger directory. WebZinger is not a search engine, it's an application. 2) What exactly is a supra-search engine? Just cool sounding marketing fluff ya know? 3) Yahoo is a portal, and a web site, that happens to have a search engine. They also have stores, chat, finances, personalized news pages, java chat apps etc etc. IMON is a software company with 7 (?) employees. I believe Yahoo uses Inktomi search egine on the back end. Real search engines are serious geek stuff that don't make much money. User base is what Yahoo has, and they're good at delivering tight HTML content that works on all machines & browsers. 4) I'm a programmer, and I estimate that I could reproduce 90% of WebZinger's functionality in a week. Really. This involves submitting queries to the aforementioned search engines, parsing the HTML results, and pulling down some content. Doable. I've done these things before. Microsoft could too. There's barely barrier to entry except for the patent around the presentation of the results. I don't know much about patents, but industry consensus is that they're hard to enforce. Apple lost their case against MS stealing their "look and feel" after years in court. 5) The head guy's posting to Yahoo. Odd that he has time to do this? hmmm. 6) Most people want to keep working in their web browsers. 8 megs to download takes a looong time. Getting people to download and install software is more work, and is only available on that machine. This is a significant limiting factor. 7) MS has a history of "borrowing" ideas from other places. Technology can be duplicated. They only buy companies when it'll save them time over replicating it themselves. 8) As far as relationship with Sun, Sun is happy whenever a software vendor uses Java, and will provide some support with PR. Java is a great language, but not optimized yet, slow. 9) WZ does not look like a version 5/6 product. I think that number is high to impress. 10) MS has a text engine built into their web server. Microsoft Index Server. Some excerpts from premium.microsoft.com Product Overview What is Microsoft Index Server? Microsoft® Index Server is a full-text indexing and search engine for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Microsoft Windows NT® Server. It allows any Web browser to search documents for key words, phrases, or properties such as an author's name. Who should use Index Server? Index Server is designed for use on a single Web server on an intranet or the Internet. It can easily handle large numbers of queries on a busy site. Automatic updating and support for Microsoft Office documents is ideal for an intranet where files change frequently. What do I need to run Index Server? Index Server requires IIS 2.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0 or Windows NT Workstation 4.0 and Peer Web Services. How much does Index Server cost? Index Server is a component of IIS 3.0, which is a free, downloadable, and integrated feature of Windows NT Server 4.0. So, as a technology person, I don't see much substance here or anything that Microsoft would need/want. In the end these things come down to faith.. there's a lot of optimism and rose colored glasses IMO.