Behind Excite@Home's Failure And AT&T's Involvement

from the lots-of-mistakes dept

Cory writes in to tell us about the latest from Bob Cringely about the impending death of Excite@Home. Cringely, not surprisingly, says the analysts take on the situation is completely wrong. He says that the problems were the following. (1) @Home never really knew what to do with Excite when they bought them, causing them to waste resources. (2) AT&T did everything they could to make @Home fail so they could swoop in and buy up the assets for next to nothing. (3) Broadband access just isn't being accepted by consumers as fast as people expected. There's simply no real business there. His points are good, though I tend not to trust anything Cringely has to say about Excite, since he always acts as if Excite was formed through his guidance (he even mentions, as he always does, how he met with the Excite founders while they were still in the garage). There's no doubt that Excite@Home made some very silly mistakes along the way, but I'm not sure they destroyed the Excite cash cow (as Cringely implies).
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Scott, 30 Aug 2001 @ 1:38pm

    No Subject Given

    What do you mean "Broadband access just isn't being accepted by consumers as fast as people expected". I live in an affluent and "techie" neiborhood and I am 1000 feet to far away from the CO for DSL and cable modem is not available either. All the broadband companies don't have enough product available and they are ignoring the requests of the consumer. Furthermore, the death of Ricochet did not have to be. They could have marketed their product where there was little or no competition!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    David Drake, 30 Aug 2001 @ 10:40pm

    Help clear up the excite@home confusion

    I stand poorly informed about the business structure between Cox Communications, AT&T and excite@home. I called the Cox people after the auditors message went out about excite@home and got a very convoluted answer. The help desk folks were not being coy, its just complex. Can someone more fully describe who's ox is getting gored, what the risks to users are, etc? Cable modem use in San Diego County is very high. There are about 700K users of this system and I would hope that would create an economic draw.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 31 Aug 2001 @ 9:22am

      Re: Help clear up the excite@home confusion

      There are some details on the relationship here. Apparently Cox used to own shares in Excite@Home, but they exchanged them for AT&T stock. At the same time, they kept an exclusive agreement with Excite@Home saying they would only use them as their ISP - but today announced they're backing out on that deal.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.