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Technology Stocks : Internet Guru Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hiram Walker who wrote (525)	3/9/1999 6:03:00 PM
From: KJ Duke	Respond to of 4337

Hiram, you're really good at rambling from one half-truth or theory to the next in an attempt to obfuscate what is important. Let me try to address a few of these. First, Coke does not distribute its product, Coca-Cola Enterprises, a separate company distributes it, and I'm not sure if they manufacture it (but if they did outsource, I doubt it affect their market share and profits much). Nike does not manufacture their products - they outsource production to Asian factories which either ship to a Nike warehouse or directly to the retailer. How do information providers make money if its free and its all crap anyway? Seems to me that CBS, ABC and NBC provide crap for free too, and they've been making money for many years. Bricks and mortar is a barrier to entry? Tell that to CompUSA and Dell ... a real barrier to entry is service and market share, bricks and mortar is in some cases becoming a barrier to profits. RNWK and their 1-inch screen? The Internet is evolving, in case you haven't noticed, its quite different from 2 years ago, even 6 months ago for that matter. If you don't believe it will continue to evolve, just wait ... of course you will have missed much of the easy money in all of these leadership companies that you say "don't have a business plan". AOL gets killed by ATHM? I want to agree with you, and I definately see your point. There's only one problem. AOL has scale and power, and more importantly vision. AOL should have died so many times already because of bad customer service and other controversies, you have to ask yourself, why didn't they? And then ask yourself, are they in a stronger or weaker position position to face competitive threats than they have been in the past? ... I can think of lots of reasons why they should get destroyed, but I wouldn't bet against them. Market share, access to capital and vision are dangerous things to bet against. As for brand loyalty and ease of switching ... even easier than switching portals and email addresses is switching colas, or shoes, or any other branded consumer product. Yet market leaders continue to exist for more reasons than I care to list, such will be true of the Internet. And enough with EBAY and the prison stories (are you in prison yourself?). I don't think it matters much, they're not dealing the goods, they're just providing the virtual real estate for one big swap meet/garage sale, and they're making money. KJ