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

To: oldcrow who wrote (19034)	1/23/1999 11:07:00 PM
From: Impristine	Respond to of 27307

how to make an industry puke, govern it, tax it, change the rules, choke off the demand, flat out kill the demand, fund the competition, no new catagories, plenty of competition, let the bean counters, try to make more than the creative dreamers, kill the dreamers, tell the world that nobody needs dreamers, make the dreamers go away, tell the world that the money is not there, tell the world that chaos is at hand, that the world is ending, that it is doom and gloom city, don't kill the industry, flat out nuke it, don't burn the bridge, just tax the crap out of it, tax, tax, tax, that is the answer, my friends, it's just a simple 3 letter word, you want to kill it, change the rules, tax the sucker to death, is this a mature industry...

To: oldcrow who wrote (19034)	1/24/1999 12:56:00 AM
From: memflyken2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27307

A-slate, I see where you're coming from, and the parallels you draw between the ad-driven portals and other emerging industries are certainly there for all to see...To me, the biggest imponderable is this: will YHOO find either (a) a revolutionary way to design web ads in order to get advertisers to get the kind of results that will keep them coming back for more advertising, and/or (b) can YHOO find another revenue source of enough significance to keep revenues and profits expanding rapidly enough to support continued stock price growth? I think we can agree on this. And whereby you are a Ya-optimist, I evidently am a Hoo-pessimist. (Actually, that's not a bad notion: easy labels -- bulls are "Ya"s and bears are "Hoos." Maybe impristine can work that into his poetry; thanks, imp, BTW, for the AMZN story link; very interesting, definitely written by a Hoo.) Anyway... I'm a pessimist on both scores because (a) any kind of advertising model that "works" i.e. gets people to stop and pay real meaningful attention to your message is by definition bound to "stop" you in your tracks. And if there's one thing web users hate it's being stopped in their tracks. All such blockages would do would be to drive users to other sites. And (b) aside from a few hundred bucks here and there from people wanting to have their sites listed, I can't think of any other way for YHOO to make money; certainly not the billions YHOO needs to generate ultimately to justify a +100 stock price. Charge more to companies like mine that need to have their web sites on the search engines? Maybe, if YHOO had a MSFT kind of monopoly, and was THE place you had to list. As long as search engines are cheap and portals are a dime a dozen, YHOO has no option but to keep its listing-prices competitive. Otherwise, people like me will just overlook it, figuring LCOS, XCIT etc. have us covered... Now I do see one big win YHOO scenario: YHOO gets bought by MSFT, and MSFT uses its formidable Windows clout to drive everybody else out of the portal business. But that could take years, even if MSFT decided to plunk down the necessary billions to acquire YHOO, and even if MSFT decided to ignore the obvious anti-trust implications and re-wrestle with the Feds, since every other portal co would sue within 15 minutes of the acquisition move. Plus, why would MSFT do that when, if Mr. Bill really wanted to, he could build from scratch his own portal system for peanuts, and launch it whenever. (Macrosoft? The Great Gates Gate? Other suggestions welcome.) No, a-slate; your argument is cogent and well-reasoned, but right now, at least, I come down on the side of the dead end street for YHOO. Of course, this post will last here on this mega-thread for all time, so if and when two years from now, I'm proven totally and utterly wrong, feel free to dig this sucker up, re-post it, and expose me for an idiot. I'm a big boy; I'll take my medicine. In the meantime, let's all keep our thinking caps on and impress the newbys who haven't read the last 18,000 posts. And yes, vibe, we can think, chew gum, and have fun, all at the same time. The Bronx, he says; what a guy/girl.................................