Ya got dat right.
The Internet is done.
The life expectancy of middle-class children born today is reportedly predicted to be 120 years.
By the time those kids are in college, the Internet will be about as hip as the digital watch.
They'll be spending their money on scrunchable screens, brain piercings, and genetic tattoos.
Sure, someone will be making gobs of money off this thing, but the market won't treat it much better than it now does oil or steel.
"Broadband" still has a way to go as an internet pipe. It will get really warm in the next year or so when non-line-of-sight, multi-megabit broadband starts to compete with line-of-sight RF, DSL, and cable. But its stock market also got stretched out in the past year. And who knows if the wire companies will ever start putting gigabit fiber in the ground.
Is DIG an investment? Maybe. I won't know for another month. I had to take a tax loss to lay off some capital gains from early 2000, and DIG was a fat hole in my port that needed to get closed up. If it goes to $2-3, I'll grab 10k shares on a flyer and forget about it for a few years. DIG's got DIS behind it, but it's just a tracking stock, so it doesn't have real-stock dynamics. Its fundamentals, if the cost ever gets controlled, will rock. But it's just a tracking stock, so its fundamentals mean something different. YHOO will win. AOL can't lose, no matter how bad they suck. MSN will go the way of MSFT, and with Dubya the Shill in the WH, MSFT will probably get its pardon and come back big. Those three are a lock. The rest have to compete on their merits. Of the rest, DIG is the one with $80B in corporate backing. NBCi is a TV station website, not an Internet Playa, even if its moms is GE; it will survive, but not thrive.
But, as everyone has seen, DIG's execution of online presence has not been impressive. Strictly fourth-rate, just as SEEK was.
--Blair
"Don't make me write a letter to Eisner telling him I could do a better job, and how. I couldn't take the pay cut."
AI
