GATEWAY SALES PLUMMET

Gateway continues to fall apart. Steep drop in fourth-quarter sales, another 15% cut in work force, more store closures. The future looks very dim. Interestingly, EMachines is hanging in there. I thought they’d be bankrupt by this time. It’s no longer a...

EXCITE@HOME TO SHUT DOWN

The game of chicken poker is over and the loser is: everybody. AT&T drove Excite@Home into bankruptcy, hoping to pick up its assets for $300 million. The bondholders objected and said the assets were worth $1 billion. The bankruptcy court gave Excite permission to...

EXCITE@HOME CONSPIRACY THEORY

The December 10 issue of Forbes magazine presents an interesting theory to explain how Excite@Home wound up in its current embarrassing predicament. “A new conspiracy theory alleges that AT&T, despite controlling 23% of @Home’s common shares and 74% of...

EXCITE@HOME MIGHT SHUT OFF CABLE INTERNET SERVICE

Early this year Northpoint shut off DSL service to 100,000 customers with only a few days notice. It caused such a flap that I thought nothing like it would ever happen again. Guess what? Excite@Home says service might be shut off on Friday to 4.1 million cable...

XO COMMUNICATIONS IN TROUBLE

XO Communications is struggling to survive. Layoffs, salary freeze, reduced advertising – all the signs of yet another telecommunications company on the ropes. Here’s an article with more details.

AMAZON OPENS TRAVEL STORE

Amazon has added a travel store, appearing as a new tab on Amazon’s home page. It links services from Expedia and Hotwire (a discount agency), presented in an Amazon design and with Amazon handling the transactions. Amazon has cut several of these deals where it...