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Technology Stocks : Broadcast.com (Acquired by Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Randy Ellingson who wrote (1148)	4/3/1999 3:26:00 AM
From: Nicholas Thompson	Respond to of 1260

I basically agree with you but I think aol's ace is icq which they got for song a while back. I only own bcst - not aol or yhoo (but I do own athm nxtl xmcm & some other internet plays). One of aol's big mistakes was not making their email available from any browser early on (it is still a pain in the ass sometimes I've heard). I wouldn't be surprised to see aol spin off their subscription service in the future to focus on all internet users as yhoo is able to do now but the proprietary nature of their service makes this difficult at present. Maybe their stumbling during this natural (and I think necessary) step will allow yhoo (or athm?!) to eclipse them.

To: Randy Ellingson who wrote (1148)	4/3/1999 12:27:00 PM
From: Pruguy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1260

your argument is well thought out,probabkly more than mine is: I disagree for a relatively simple set of reasons. 1)AOL is king of the hill. It is theirs to loose and their leadership in the industry is very strong. They haven't really shown any major misteps and therefor I don't see any reason to conclude they will let the market pass them by. 2)I do not know the percentage, but I am sure that many of yahoo users are aol members 3) any major player in the internet needs AOL to be on their side....They are by far the biggest and therefor any company who tries to succeed without them is swimming upstream. Take a look at MSFT if you qquestion that. MSN has all the advanttages that AOL has in growing their business....name recognition, desktop placement..etc, but MSN has tried to succeed without partnering in any way with AOL...consequently, MSN is a failure on every measure.. Many peiople don't like AOL basic service.....Just fine for them, then they try to get you to use the anti-brand which is compuserve. Either way they got you. Their avg. customer is now on-line 45 minutes a day....Thats huge and I don't see anyone catching them with the current management team. Lastly, while broadband is a competitive offering against AOL, it does not preclude a customer from paying an extra 9.95 for AOL anywhere. Many people will do this and then the brioadband folks will realize how many of their subscribers are not using their proprietary spaces...they will then work out a deal with AOL.. Like it or not, everyone, even the competition, needs their AOL

To: Randy Ellingson who wrote (1148)	4/5/1999 2:40:00 AM
From: David Cecil	Respond to of 1260

If I remember right, some time back AOL made a comment about changing to HTML based programs. That was one of the main reasons for them to acquire NSCP. Also that is why AOL hired Netscape's co-founder Marc Andreessen as their CTO. In fact in one article, I read how Marc did not have a very high opinion of AOL saying that it is a company with no technical strength, but later he realized and accepted that appealing to the mass is more important for a company to succeed than technical strength. Comparing the services of YHOO and AOL, I am in the same boat as you. I use Yahoo's quote service. They had the lead and still maintain the lead. I like Yahoo's game server too. I do not go to AOL for any content. But a lot of people who use AOL as their ISP spend time in AOL.com. Their digital city for one is extremely popular. Also AOL's community building is very good, especially brands like ICQ which is a huge community and a fast growing one too. ICQ is a totally untapped potential for AOL. As Pruguy mentioned AOL uses different brand names to their advantage. Not many people know that ICQ or Compuserve belongs to AOL. I think, there can be three leaders, AOL, MSFT and YHOO (in alphabetical order only not ranking). If I have to pick a winner now, I would pick AOL. Right now I am invested in AOL only (entered through NSCP) but looking to buy both MSFT and YHOO. Planning to enter YHOO through BCST. David Cecil