The toughest part about the Internet industry is figuring out where the business is heading. Miss a trend, and you're history in six months.
That's why At Home's bid for Excite sent the industry's big thinkers back to their offices Tuesday to figure out where the industry is heading.
Here's what some of those fat cats had to say about the deal:
Jeff Mallet, president and COO, Yahoo:
"Congratulations to Excite for getting that type of premium out there ... At Home was outside of our strategy. We want to make Yahoo services available anywhere.... We have a lot of respect for what [Excite] has done [for the portal space] but we didn't see anything special over there.... Their reach has been down for the last three quarters."
Christopher Lochhead, chief marketing officer for Scient, an IT consulting firm with clients like the Recording Industry Association of America, eBay (EBAY), and Chase Manhattan Bank:
"Smart Net companies are using their stratospheric market cap, at mental valuations, to amass e-assets. Those companies will be well positioned long-term. This is big news. Stay tuned for more to come."
Barak Berkowitz, senior vice president and general manager, Go Network:
"It will become a battle of large partnerships. Consolidation will continue. There�s going to be a minimum size you need to compete in the portal-central aggregation space."
Russell C. Horowitz, chief executive at Go2Net, which analysts say is another buyout candidate:
"The deal makes a lot of strategic sense, if you look at AOL as a standard, having its own complete Net service and content. There's a long list of people that need to be in this space."
