Conference nyoss1::market_investing

    btw, a week ago some guy asked in misc.invest.stocks for opinions about
    investing the down payment for his house in the Yahoo ipo. Many replies
    said that it probably wasn't good to risk short term money in an ipo,
    but very few questioned the basic idea of investing in a web directory
    and search engine company. 

    re: Yahoo IPO
    
    I think the theory is the same as DEC using Alta Vista as a product. 
    It fills a need for a good search engine.  The thinking is, there are
    a lot of people on the Web, they need to search for what they need,
    Yahoo wants to be the best one (of many.)  Just like Netscape wants
    to be the best browser (of many.)  How will Yahoo be best?  Maybe it'll
    go for exclusive listings, or such.  Maybe it will go as a strategic
    partner to Microsoft.  Maybe it'll be easiest to use.  Maybe they'll
    come out with other products (like a browser) or something.  
    
    I would stay away from it, but then again, I tend to stay away from
    IPOs.  I'm pretty bearish on tech stocks right now (I'm really anxious
    to hear this quarter's earning for the industry.)  If the industry is
    in a downturn, Yahoo might be a bust.
    
    
    I certainly wouldn't put the house on it.
    
    
    
    Bart

    I think the concept is in people investing in an image.  Netscape is a
    modern phenomenom in that a small percentage of ownership was offered
    at a price/capitalization which had no conventional investment
    foundation.  Then the money poured in and voila, now the talent has the
    capital to quickly justify the heretofore "foolish" ipo investment. 
    And the "fools" mostly made money.
    
    If Digital took 10% of AltaVista and made it public why couldn't they
    repeat the Netscape story?

    I see the business opportunity in the Intranet area. Most large
    companies will have internal WWW sites set up an they need a search
    engine. The internal AltaVista at digital is the example for this.
    
    Yahoo's added value here is structuring information access for their
    customers.
    
    While AltaVista is a very powerful base technolgy for this, we should
    not try to get address this market directly. We should make Yahoo, Lycos 
    and all the others our partners and avoid competing with them.
    
    AltaVista still is the greatest marketing story we have had in years.
    
    Klaus
    

	FWIW, as a followup, the IPO occured last week (Friday I believe),
	offered at $13, closed the trading day at $33, making it the best
	IPO for the year thus far.

	I do not know what the opening price was (the best price us mere
	mortals could of gotton the stock for at the begin of public trading).
	Anyone know the trading symbol?

    RE: .5
    
    The symbol is YHOO.  What anyone who wasn't trading with a market maker
    could have gotten the stock for was around $22-24.  Even at that price,
    though, it still went up to $42.  Not a bad one day profit.  
    
    Personally, I got so busy with work that day I forgot about the IPO,
    and didn't get in until the low 30s.  Time will tell if I can get out
    with a few additional bucks in my pocket or not.
    
    Chuck
    

    At that price the market valuation is over $1bn, a stagering amount when
    you look at the product. So Alta-Vista must be worth a similar amount, if
    not more, it's certainly faster and I think it's  easier to use.

    Priced as $1bn Alta-Vista must be one of Digital's hottest assets, it's
    more than Oracle paid for RDB.
    
    But would Digital sell it, or possible split it off into a seperate company
    but hold a majority interest.

    Just Speculation, but it would certainly boost Digital's earnings...


	Ferdy

re                      <<< Note 990.7 by CHEFS::MACLEOD >>>
                         -< So what price Alta-Vista >-

    
>    But would Digital sell it, or possible split it off into a seperate company
>    but hold a majority interest.

they should split it off!!
the rest of DEC will drag down the glitz and glitter of
AltaVista.

> At that price the market valuation is over $1bn, a stagering amount when
> you look at the product.

	From my understanding, and I'm basically quoting analysts
	from one or more of the following sources: NBR, W$W, CNN HN ...

	Yahoo does not have a real product per se.  There only revenue
	is advertisement revenue.  Ie. it's like the free trade rags
	we've all subscribed to at one time or another.  The product
	itself is given away, paid fully by advertisers (though I'm
	not sure Yahoo's ad revenues have yet surpassed operating costs?).
	This is kinda simliar to Netscape which gives away it's browser.
	However the browser is only Netscape's foot in the door, and
	their revenue comes from their servers and other products.

    In last night's Syracuse, NY newspaper there was a good review of the
    various search engines available for Internet users.  Yahoo was
    discussed, and quite a bit of time was spent on Alta Vista (it was a
    syndicated article, not locally written, so others might have seen it.) 
    What it allowed me to see was both the positive, and in some cases,
    negative aspects of each engine.  And Alta Vista does have some, which 
    the article pointed out, but which we do not hear of.  It also pointed
    out that Yahoo will soon be incorporating some of the better features
    that Alta Vista currently has.
    
    We need to be careful when hyping Alta Vista - it doesn't cure cancer,
    and is not a remedy for the common cold.  And what Yahoo and the others
    have that we do not, is marketing savvy and hype.  Much like other
    Digital products and services in the past, if you cannot market the
    product, it ain't going anywhere.  An example is clustering - Digital
    invented it 20 years ago, but if you look at recent claims by Microsoft
    and Compaq, it would appear that they are the first to do so.  Any bets
    as to which side the customers will ultimately believe?
    
    So when you say spin off Alta Vista (which from a purely business
    standpoint should be done), will the wherewithal to make it a success
    be there?  Or will it just become another nice product from Digital
    that died a quiet death.
    
    Chuck                                                  
    

    Who knows, may be Yahoo or Netscape will make an offer and Digital will
    sell the Alta Vista to make the numbers for some future quarter.
    
    - Vikas

    re .11
    
    Or maybe this quarter...
    
    
    Bart

    And it will probably sell it dirt cheap and put a spin on it
    
    	"To realign our business interest and to focus on our core
    	 competency, we are divesting from the Alta Vista technology.
    
    	 We are glad that dynamic company such as Yahoo has chosen our 
    	 technology and we are very fortunate to have them as our partner"
    
    - Vikas

	But whatever DEC do, all of a sudden they have a hot asset, with a
	value that can be roughly calculated. Which must look good on the
	books.

	And if times do get hard, a bit more family silver to sell...


	Ferdy

I'm in the ISBU, home of AltaVista.  i'm the PL of
one of the products which is being realigned under the
AltaVista branding from POLYCENTER.


all the mtgs i've been to, the word "marketing" is used
extensively.  this pleased me, because as Chuck said in .10,
no marketing, no success.  and, it just so happens that i'm
taking a marketing course right now at night.  so, i can
understand the talk, and so far, it seems like the ISBU is
putting a big emphasis on mkt'g.  i've been around DEC software
engineering for 9 years, and imo, DEC still is not very good
at S/w engineering... bringing good mkt'g together with engineering
will go a long way to making some of these new AltaVista products
successful;
ideas for what to build MUST come from marketing, not from
engineering.

jc

    
    
    re . last few
    
    ... and if we wait long enough to decide what to do, our competitors will
    pass us and Alta Vista will become a 'has been'
    

re                      <<< Note 990.16 by CSCMA::BALICH >>>


you are right on that.
those small nimble companies aren't busy moving people around
and building executive suites... they're making product and
getting it out there.

i've always questioned and wondered why the ISBU is waiting sooo
long to do their big kickoff in early May.
why not now?

	Checking out Alta-Vista I found a link from the "About Alta Vista"
	page to the following articile.  It does kind give Yahoo some
	credit however for the stuff they do by hand.

          Chronicle Front Page
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          The Gate
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Thursday, March 28, 1996 � Page B1             �1996 San Francisco Chronicle
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HERB GREENBERG'S BUSINESS INSIDER -- With Their IPOs Imminent, Which Search
Engines Are Best?
Also, Westborough holds the lead in stock contest

Herb Greenberg

The next round of Internet insanity is about to get under way with the imminent
IPOs of several so-called search engines -- databases that allow you to get
where you're going on the Web.

Tomorrow is expected to be the first day of trading for Lycos. It's expected to
be followed sometime next week by Excite and then, late the following week, by
the granddaddy (or best-known) of all search engines -- Yahoo.

Two others, Infoseek and the McKinley Group (operator of Magellan), are
expected to go public shortly.

Considering the hype over these deals, I asked my readers to tell me which is
the best.

This wasn't a scientific study, and I received only around 30 replies. But they
were surprising -- if for nothing else than nobody voted for Yahoo.

The reason, according to reader Art M., who claims to have been associated with
the Internet for the past 10 years, ``is that Yahoo isn't in the same class as
Lycos and the rest. Yahoo is primarily a directory service, the others are
general search tools,'' he says. ``The difference is something like the
difference between a table of contents at the front of a book (Yahoo) and the
index in the back (Lycos et al.).''

Art adds the reason so many search engines are going public is because ``their
days are numbered, and the venture-capital investors see this and want to get
their money out while they still can.''

That may or may not be the case, but if a vote were held today for the best
search engine, my readers say the winner would be none of the above. Instead,
they're most enamored with Palo Alto-based Alta Vista, which is a test site
launched three months ago by computer giant Digital Equipment.

According to Art M., ``Digital almost accidentally let loose a search engine
that's far better, faster and more comprehensive than any of the others. And
they're providing it as an advertising-free service to the Internet. It's
essentially a demonstration of their Alpha hardware, and use of it has eclipsed
the older, slower searchers.''

``The folks at Lycos, Excite, Infoseek and the rest must have had a cow
sideways. Yahoo adds value in a different way though, by hand-classifying Web
pages into a directory; so they're more or less not so radically affected by
Alta Vista.''

That's about the only kind word anybody had for Yahoo. Most were like this,
from Paul Fargo, who likes Alta Vista's broad database ``and fairly powerful
syntax. For example, asking for Business Insider + Chronicle shows one of your
columns at the top of a couple hundred entries.'' ``Super fast, super
complete,'' adds Paul Gomory of G.A. Partners in San Francisco.

And then there was this, from Bruce Long: ``Of course the best way to gauge the
depth of a search engine is by having it search for your own name. In my case I
get 116 Web pages with my name (or with someone else's name identical to mine)
after an Alta Vista search. With an Infoseek search, on the other hand, I get
five pages with my name. Similar meager results are found with most other
search engines.''

I did the same test and found that Alta Vista quickly locked into my columns,
while Magellan put me in touch with anything having to do with herbs.

While it's good, Alta Vista isn't without its flaws. ``A recent disk shortage
at Digital is hampering recent updates,'' writes Theresa Carey.

But, heck, what do you expect from a test site?

After Alta Vista, the next most popular site was Excite. ChanelLdy (Jayleen)
e-mailed that she likes the ``friendly environment that appears on each page.
I've noticed they continually improve their format to please customers.''

Bill Schmarzo, who uses the Internet for competitive analysis, topic-specific
research and customer research, was more to the point: ``I was recently
searching for Data Warehousing Web references. Using some Excite-specific
features, I was able to get a quick list and then drill down on the topics that
were the most relevant. This then produced a new list of references, all more
relevant than the original request.''

Aram Attarian, who uses the Internet to track sales productivity, heaps praise
on Excite's ``Personal Page'' concept. ``This capability is an excellent start
toward a truly useful search engine for the occasional user

--or the user who just doesn't have time to sit at a workstation all day and
seek out information. I do searches, track news feeds, hit Web pages, etc. The
ability to do it from one page means I don't have to worry as much about
navigating as I do about using the information I get (and need).''

Infoseek isn't without its fans, such as e-mailer Bogdan, who writes: ``As an
information consultant, I conduct several searches of the Web every day.
Infoseek is deemed to be the broadest in terms of coverage and the fastest in
terms of response time of all -- should I say commercial, or just normal -- Web
(and Newsgroups) search engines.''

He then adds: ``There is a little known search engine, Alta Vista that always
surprises me with the links it finds and provides even on esoteric searches.''

Would you rather do a universal search? There are several sites that search the
search engines. The most frequently mentioned was Metacrawler, but Gary Schick,
president of Strada Internet Services in San Francisco, also likes The
Motherload-Insane Search.

``The search is more complete and I am more likely to find the information I
want,'' he says. ``In the beginning of 1995 I used Yahoo. Then I found Infoseek
was a better search vehicle. In October 1995, I found Metacrawler, and have
used it ever since. I just found out about the Motherload-Insane Search site
this week and it appears to provide a more comprehensive search than
Metacrawler.''

What does all of this mean for the upcoming IPOs? Well, considering that Alta
Vista went from 300,000 hits a day to 5 million today, since its December
launch, suggests barriers to entry are low, users are adventuresome and
whichever search engine provides the easiest, fastest and most comprehensive
search may be the ultimate winner.

In other words, the hype only goes so far.

STOCK MARKET GAME

With four weeks gone, Cal State Hayward's Stock Market Game for students
continues to churn on, and Team 253 from Westborough Middle School remains in
first place with a gain of 78 percent. Rounding out the top five are Team 1299
from Acalanes High in Lafayette, up 55 percent; team 44 from Marin Country Day
School, up 42 percent; and Team 1249 -- also from Acalanes -- up 37 percent.
Each team invests an imaginary $100,000 into whichever stocks they please.
Which stocks have these geniuses picked? We'll let you know in six weeks.

  Chronicle Search    Feedback   Chronicle Front Page     The Gate Home Page
� The Chronicle Publishing Company

.5> FWIW, as a followup, the IPO occured last week (Friday I believe),
.5> offered at $13, closed the trading day at $33, making it the best
.5> IPO for the year thus far.

	Caught this from the DBC Headlines:

[#ALERT,#TECH,YHOO] YAHOO! HITS NEW 52-WEEK LOW OF 16 1/4