-- Mark Twain
Oh, okay, Rick. I'm not really going to kill you. And I have to confess that this, my first ever Dueling Fools, has been fun. Thank you for not being too rough on me.
I liked your arguments, Rick. They seem strong at first glance. You give a seemingly endless list of all the great Web properties that GO.com owns. Sports sites galore, Snow White and the Dwarves over at Disney.com, hard-hitting news at ABC, and that oft-made-fun-of Regis Philbin and his antics on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Ah, yes. Yippee for the content.
But, really now, Rick, where's the beef here? Where's the real stuff that makes a company a solid investment? A long-term winner? I don't see any of it in your arguments for GO. All I see is a long list of content, and well, not to be repetitive (but you did say it best), content is not king.
GO is lacking the strong community angle that both Lycos and Yahoo! have. GO's management has made some fairly questionable decisions in the company's relatively short life. Plus, its lack of vision is enough to concern even the most jaded dot-com investor. Without strong community and effective management, GO won't succeed. Just lining up content is not enough.
You said that GO had 23 million unique visitors last month. That's not bad. You then went on to point out that Yahoo! had almost double that. Wowzers. You can add to those numbers some of my own from Nielsen's NetRatings. The average time that was spent on Yahoo! by each unique visitor for the month of May was an hour and four minutes (and sixteen seconds). The average time spent on one of the GO Network sites for the month of May was twenty-three minutes and twenty-three seconds. For me, the choice is clear. Comparing these two companies just isn't fair to GO.com. Yahoo! is clearly a superior company, however you chose to measure it.
You can talk about traffic. You can talk about "stickiness." You can talk about profits. You can talk about efficiency. You can talk about both community and great management. Yahoo! wins. Why would I take a risk on a company that is bleeding red all over the place (can somebody bring me a mop?) when I could buy the first mover in the space? It's all about resource allocation. I want my investment moolah parked in the best possible place, and GO just isn't it.
I don't see any compelling reason for GO to be a huge financial success, either. Sure, I'll grant you that the company has some great brands under its belt. But great brands do not necessarily translate into strong and profitable success. Management along the way can mess up lots of things, and GO's hasn't done the best job so far at making that fear seem unreasonable. If anything, they've underscored it. They've not given any clear indication of how the company plans to become profitable or when it will happen. And they've seesawed on exactly what the company is.
Sorry, Rick, but that is too much uncertainty for my palate. I work too hard to squander my dollars on a company that can't tell me what it plans to do and how it will achieve those goals. Investing in this company is like giving your kid brother money to start a little summer business and having him tell you, "I don't know. I might mow lawns. I might sell lemonade. I might do handiwork. I'll figure it out, though! Thanks so much for the dough!" No, I don't think so. I'm not investing for charity's sake here.
GO.com? No way, no how, no can do. My money has better places to be. Call me a snob for wanting to own a profitable company with sweet margins and lovely cash flows, if you must. I'm cool with that. I just can't GO down that road with you, Rick. Sorry.
This Week's Duel
Related Links