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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Srini who wrote (19294)	3/30/1999 2:45:00 PM
From: Teflon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Srini, You should own both MSFT and AOL, for now, until the landscape significantly changes. I would also throw ATHM into the mix as well, but AOL is a must have right now and in the near future. End of Story. Teflon

To: Srini who wrote (19294)	3/30/1999 3:29:00 PM
From: Alan Buckley	Respond to of 74651

[There seems to be an overwhelming flood of positive emotion regarding AOL ( a competitor).] The inter-relationships in the industry are complicated precisely because the products are "soft", i.e. they tend to expand and bleed across category boundaries with regularity. AOL's rise is good-to-neutral news for MSFT at this point. I don't think of AOL as a MSFT competitor as much as I think of them as a "killer Windows app" vendor. From MSFTs perspective, there can't be too many of these as they strengthen Windows. Everybody who runs AOL also runs Windows. The more reason consumers have for actively using their PCs, the more likely they are to spend money (directly or indirectly) on MSFT software. Sure, AOL competes with the MSN service, but honestly MSN is not something MSFTs done a wonderful job on. It's certainly no where near as important as the success of the platform software. Paul Allen, co-founder of MSFT, made a very large investment in AOL early on. I believe he sold off part of it, though.