To: Nate Zelnick 
Cc: online-news@marketplace.com, allaire@worldmedia.com
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	I guess you've got a handle on it, Nate.  But if as you say it 
was to compete with Prodigy's announcement, I don't understand why they 
would come out with a notably inferior product.  I mean, like Pizza Hut 
comes out with Bigfoot and Domino's comes out with Dominator, and they're 
six of one, half dozen of the other.  It doesn't pay in any business to 
be quality-deficient in a competitve, fast-changing environment.  In 
fact, it's often fatal.  And they could have done the same thing as 
Prodigy -- get people to write code and put a solid product together.  I 
suspect they have real considerations about creating competitors for 
their online news services and other market areas, and don't see the 
wisdom in handing potential competitors well-crafted products to compete.
As you know, some of the Senate legislation had language that envisions a 
future of content providers like AOL vs content consumers like you and I 
, with a minimum of interactivity, and that based on buying activity.
I never heard where that legislation has gone, either.  But they may well 
know something aboiut the future shape of CyberSpace that you and I 
don't, and may design products knowing that the lag is only temporary 
because such-and-such is coming -- such-and-such like reduced free 
online time and limiting publication by reducing email loads.  I really 
get that they have not given up on the idea that by swidft strokes now, 
they can control online content and delivery down the road.  And which of 
us can spend the time analyzing legislation as well as a Washington law 
firm's 400-man staff?  Believe me, they have some pretty good guesses in 
hand as to how the future of online will shape up, and they do mean to 
control it.

Joe Shea

                                             joeshea@netcom.com

On Tue, 2 May 1995, Nate Zelnick wrote:

>  Joe Shea   wrote:
> 
> > 	Jeremy, did you really think they would assist in creating their 
> > own competition?
> > 
> If this was motivated by that concern, I doubt they would have 
> plunked down the kind of cash they have for all of the pieces of 
> putting together a real Internet business.  They could have used that 
> money to mollify the content providers who are pi...uh...miffed that 
> they don't seem to be making any money being on the consumer 
> online services.  They really don't see the Web as competition--they 
> see it as a chance to jump on the bandwagon and scarfup all of that 
> "free" content out there while signing up new users in droves.
> 
> I think they rushed this because Prodigy totally surpirsed them with 
> their excellent browser (I just went on and checked it out 
> again--full support for whatever I want to do with it, including 
> entering SSL-enabled sites with security on, logging into 
> password-protected sites, et. al.  Still too slow, even at 14.4, but 
> a fine solution for the technically adverse who shouldn't have to 
> know that there's such a thing as Winsock).
> 
> The disappointing thing is that InternetWorks DOES have all kinds of 
> nifty tricks, none of which seem to have found their way into AOL's 
> browser (well, maybe some of the OLE 2 stuff).
> 
> 
> Nate Zelnick                          natez@pluto.njcc.com
> Information & Interactive Services Report v. 609-397-8990
> Report on Electronic Commerce             f. 609-397-8993
> Multimedia Daily       URL http://pluto.njcc.com/~natez/
> 
> 

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