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. "
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)
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
Slashdot Mirror
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