Friday, November 27, 1998

Why should the regulators look at the web browser market? After all, Netscape's valuation was just $4.2 billion, while Yahoo's, today, is $21.4 billion. It seems that the (stock) market has decided. Web browsers are old tech, perhaps even as old as operating systems.

More money facts. Today AOL is valued at $43 billion. I think this is the game that they're really playing. They don't care about source code, or open source, or even which browser they use. Simply being able to say that they can up their utility during (for them) off-hours, among businesspeople and in education, is all they need to bump their stock price to the next notch.

And Amazon, at $11.4 billion will meet up with AOL. They're going to the same place, selling stuff to the masses. But AOL is doing it right, developing multiple brands with separate identities for different audiences, while Amazon is piling them all into a single home page. Earth's largest bookstore is in danger of becoming earth's largest mess.

And Microsoft, innocently feigning vulnerability, weighs in at a hefty $319 billion. Takes a lickin keeps on tickin.

We're looking for some Dr. Watson expertise this evening.

http://cookiecentral.com/.

Wired: Is Barksdale on the block? Of course!

SJ Merc: What awaits Andreessen?

eBlast is supposed to be the thinking person's guide to the web. It's a good idea, a silly name, and it doesn't work. It's a hodge-podge. AltaVista works better.

AltaVista query for Euclid and Postulate.

Idea: One of the email client vendors could jump into the lead by making it easy to route spam to an invisible mailbox. I want to be able to point to a message, choose a command, click on a checkbox to select from a small set of criteria, and then click on OK and be done with it. A Spam Wizard, basically.

Wired: The art of the secret handshake.