Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the let-them-float dept.
x00 writes "The BBC News site is currently reporting that Altavista is going to float and that it could be worth 5 Billion Dollars. It also states that it could possibly merge with Lycos. "
Why, I much prefer Google, except for babelfish
by
georgeha
·
· Score: 2
I so rarely use altavista anymore, I like google much better.
Now if they had done an IPO a year ago, they might have done better.
George
So it's finally going to happen
by
cyoon
·
· Score: 2
Too bad those who could have gained the most from AV going public have left the company a long time ago. I work for a company that was founded by ex-AV employees. They waited, along with every other employee, for AV to public so they could make their money. They quit waiting a couple of years ago and started a consulting firm. Apprently, many other people quit, too: VP's, managers, techies, all types. It was just too long. AV has already lost the best it had.
Let me get this straight? This is a company which has even less in the way of physical assets, than (for example) Redhat, who (you will remember) are now worth an absolutely ridiculous amount of money.
Can anyone tell me exactly what Altavista owns, how it makes money (if it does?) and what its turnover, net assests etc are?
5 billion is a lot, no matter how you say it. The only thing I can imagine is that people will invest in case AV starts to make money. But with the 5 billion investment, AV could easily itself invest in other companies with tangible assets - maybe this is the point though, and I'm missing it? If anyone out there has some spare cash to invest mail me, I know the ideal thing for you (no really!).
But yeah, this is one almighty head-f*** so early in the morning!
Mong.
* Paul Madley...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
--
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
Altavista will probably be valued below it's original estimate. Too much competition, too little value.
It would be a very tempting target for Microsoft, who still want the portal market. It would also let them kill off some of the competition.
No sane investor is going to hang around to see if Altavista is Y2K-compliant. Any IPO this close, EITHER side, is likely to be doomed by market panic.
Even if the investors don't panic, other companies they've invested in -may-. A market crash is no time to be investing.
Non-productive IPOs have done extremely badly, overall. BeOS dropped like a stone, and despite initially doing OK, MP3.com didn't come out smelling of roses, either.
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I think you may be right, this may very well spell the end for the bound-to-succeed portal IPO period. Altavista has a name and has been around for while, but beyond that it has absolutely nothing to offer. Its no longer the best search engine (by far), nor the smartest. The portal services are as glued on, unncessary, and artificial as anywhere else.
In a way I hate to see Altavista targeted like this. It was a very good services around its inception, and though I don't use it anymore, I have some fond memories of first learning its advanced search syntax. Altavista has mostly suffered from being the bastard child in two mismanaged companies that didn't care about it. On the other hand: it is about time.
It's worth noting however that everyone who has predicted the end of the stupid IPOs for anything with a name in Cyberspace has turned out to be wrong, and that this has costed some conservative investors a lot of money. I have been opposed to the portal concept since its inception: I believe that as people get more at home on the Net, they will use portals less, not more (the only search services I use are Google and Alltheweb, both demo services by companies selling search technology), but so far, I have been proved wrong again and again.
I hasn't been a great few years for the devils advocates of the stock markets...
- We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
It's funny how everyone downplays what they think Altavista will do, considering the success of Redhat. The points against Redhat go along the lines of:
They're only gaining popularity because of the trial against MSFT.
They're worth as much as they're worth because one day they may make a bundle of money.
They have no proprietary advantage over their competitors, in fact they have a huge potential for competition, since their product is free...
They've fared very well, thus far.
As far as Altavista goes, if they were a new search engine, then yeah, it'd be a waste of dollars. But they're not a new company. They're a well established search engine. They've got a HUGE audience. Yes, click-throughs are dropping, but they've expanded their services to include shopping, etc... so there's a clear money making scheme at work.
If Amazon and Redhat can see their market caps hit 15 billion based on the expectationt hat one day (not today) their earnings will make their share prices worthwhile, then surely Altavista can be afforded the same luxury.
And lets not forget, Altavista's being run by CMGI - a 17 billion dollar company. This will be a killer IPO, IMHO.
What does altavista sell/provide that could possibly be worth $5 billion?
A search engine that, while popular, can't match the quality of some of its upstart competition, ie google.
A portal that, while somewhat popular, is not much better than any other portal, and portals are a dime-a-dozen these days.
Some web-auction services that, quite frankly, aren't going to unseat ebay any time soon.
Web-based email service, as if no one else is doing that these days.
An online yellow-pages-like business directory -- a market that lots of companies are entering and which has had a lot of competition (like switchboard) for a while.
Plus some other assorted things like stockquotes, weather, etc. that are well covered by other sites.
All altavista has going for it right now is an established brand name and an established web presence. While those two things are good to have, their value is diminished as most of the rest of the business world gets onto the web. There's room for altavista to make some sort of profit, perhaps, but it likely wouldn't be soon, and it certainly wouldn't justify a multi-billion-dollar market cap. Most internet IPOs just don't.
--
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
If AltaVista is worth $5 billion, I'll pour a hot bowl of grits down my pants !!! Wait a minute...I'll do that anyway !!!
Altavista will help you buy books from Amazon about pouring hot grits down your pants.
George
Re:if it weighs the same as a duck, then...
by
jd
·
· Score: 2
They won't market the product (other than Slashdot, exactly WHERE have you seen BeOS advertised?).
They won't support the product (you might have seen the BeOS users from the M68K flavour make rather pointed comments on the subject).
They won't expand the product (ever seen a BeOS driver? They're rarer than NT's!)
They aim for the multimedia market, but there's next to zero multimedia software.
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call that selling, unless "selling" is somehow extended to include deliberate self-destruction. I'd say they were adopting kamakazi tactics, but as they're not likely to take any of their competitors out in the process, that would be at best wildly inaccurate.
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
1) Google loads fast. Pages that take more than 5 seconds to load had better have some pretty damn good content. 2) Google searches fast. It doesn't take forever to return results. 3) Google really is more accurate. Go to google, type "trek", hit "I feel lucky punk" and Blammo, you're there. With AltaVista, all you get is some other page. You have to hunt through a huge list to find what you want.
Boolean queries are nice, but they fall down sometimes. Google does a better job more often than Alta Vista.
Re:if it weighs the same as a duck, then...
by
beme
·
· Score: 2
If you go to www.bedepot.com you can buy the BeOS. Therefor I concluded that they are selling a product. As for their marketing practices or business plan, I'm in no position to comment.
As far as my experience with the company goes, they do support the product. I've received several updates, which included new drivers for hardware that was previously unsupported. While there may not be shelves full of software for the BeOS, there's some out there and it appears that there is more on the way.
Now, although their IPO was not a smashing success, I believe it did generate the cash they wanted. Now they just need to utilize that cash to impress other investors and drive their value up.
My main point was that I didn't think an IPO needed to rocket to amazing prices immediately to be considered worthwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
I so rarely use altavista anymore, I like google much better.
Now if they had done an IPO a year ago, they might have done better.
George
Too bad those who could have gained the most from AV going public have left the company a long time ago. I work for a company that was founded by ex-AV employees. They waited, along with every other employee, for AV to public so they could make their money. They quit waiting a couple of years ago and started a consulting firm. Apprently, many other people quit, too: VP's, managers, techies, all types. It was just too long. AV has already lost the best it had.
Let me get this straight? This is a company which has even less in the way of physical assets, than (for example) Redhat, who (you will remember) are now worth an absolutely ridiculous amount of money.
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Can anyone tell me exactly what Altavista owns, how it makes money (if it does?) and what its turnover, net assests etc are?
5 billion is a lot, no matter how you say it. The only thing I can imagine is that people will invest in case AV starts to make money. But with the 5 billion investment, AV could easily itself invest in other companies with tangible assets - maybe this is the point though, and I'm missing it? If anyone out there has some spare cash to invest mail me, I know the ideal thing for you (no really!).
But yeah, this is one almighty head-f*** so early in the morning!
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A search engine that, while popular, can't match the quality of some of its upstart competition, ie google.
A portal that, while somewhat popular, is not much better than any other portal, and portals are a dime-a-dozen these days.
Some web-auction services that, quite frankly, aren't going to unseat ebay any time soon.
Web-based email service, as if no one else is doing that these days.
An online yellow-pages-like business directory -- a market that lots of companies are entering and which has had a lot of competition (like switchboard) for a while.
Plus some other assorted things like stockquotes, weather, etc. that are well covered by other sites.
All altavista has going for it right now is an established brand name and an established web presence. While those two things are good to have, their value is diminished as most of the rest of the business world gets onto the web. There's room for altavista to make some sort of profit, perhaps, but it likely wouldn't be soon, and it certainly wouldn't justify a multi-billion-dollar market cap. Most internet IPOs just don't.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
If AltaVista is worth $5 billion, I'll pour a hot bowl of grits down my pants !!! Wait a minute...I'll do that anyway !!!
Altavista will help you buy books from Amazon about pouring hot grits down your pants.
George
They won't support the product (you might have seen the BeOS users from the M68K flavour make rather pointed comments on the subject).
They won't expand the product (ever seen a BeOS driver? They're rarer than NT's!)
They aim for the multimedia market, but there's next to zero multimedia software.
I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call that selling, unless "selling" is somehow extended to include deliberate self-destruction. I'd say they were adopting kamakazi tactics, but as they're not likely to take any of their competitors out in the process, that would be at best wildly inaccurate.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
1) Google loads fast. Pages that take more than 5 seconds to load had better have some pretty damn good content.
2) Google searches fast. It doesn't take forever to return results.
3) Google really is more accurate. Go to google, type "trek", hit "I feel lucky punk" and Blammo, you're there. With AltaVista, all you get is some other page. You have to hunt through a huge list to find what you want.
Boolean queries are nice, but they fall down sometimes. Google does a better job more often than Alta Vista.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
If you go to www.bedepot.com you can buy the BeOS. Therefor I concluded that they are selling a product. As for their marketing practices or business plan, I'm in no position to comment.
As far as my experience with the company goes, they do support the product. I've received several updates, which included new drivers for hardware that was previously unsupported.
While there may not be shelves full of software for the BeOS, there's some out there and it appears that there is more on the way.
Now, although their IPO was not a smashing success, I believe it did generate the cash they wanted. Now they just need to utilize that cash to impress other investors and drive their value up.
My main point was that I didn't think an IPO needed to rocket to amazing prices immediately to be considered worthwhile.
-beme
-beme
1971