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

To: Dave Mansfield who wrote (21761)	5/16/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: Randy Ellingson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

Bottom line, all it takes is a few million dollars to enter the portal business, not the several hundred of millions that it takes to enter the television business, but still they enter. Fox, UPN, WB. Watch the competition flood this market if somebody can prove the ability to make enough money in it. So far that has not happened. Dave- Thanks for the reply; I see the "no barriers to entry" aspects of Yahoo's business. OTOH, they do have the luxury of operating from a position of strength, having established one of the largest user bases as well as many valuable (and lucrative) business relationships (primarily advertising/marketing based, but also commerce-based). To the extent that they are a well-known site, they are effectively a barrier to entry. I don't have numbers to back this up, but my understanding (from my own and others' use patterns) suggests that users are not very likely to switch from one service to another. For me, that may mean that since I use Yahoo's financials services and People Search (addresses, phone #s, email addresses), I'll likely be using those same sites five years from now. Yahoo's well on the way to making $100 million off their business over the coming year; with the agreed-upon growth of the Internet, that would seem to be "enough money" to attract the competition (as it already has). Randy * OT * Read no further unless you're curious about a shameless art plug. My mother is an artist (contemporary, colorful, abstract paintings and monotype prints) in the Bay area, and over the past week has been holding her first online auction. One painting at eBay and one at Amazon.com. Both auctions end today around 3 pm PT. Links to both are available at this address: sirius.com