Finding true friendship

The Internet era often has been described as the "Wild, Wild West." Well, both have a lot in common when it comes to picking - and keeping - friends. And you don't have to be Will Smith in a summer blockbuster to notice that the people or companies you thought were your allies instead turn out to be aliens.

Some of the communications industry's most familiar names seem to be picking up new friends - or new rivals - this summer. Despite what you may think, no company is an "Internet enemy" to any company yet. The game still is too new, and too much money is still at stake.

Let's look at the news surrounding some of these newfound friendships and see if there is more to them than meets the eye.

Microsoft. This company is a long-time supporter of just about any technology that will make a computer do more work. In the pursuit of bringing more bandwidth to the Internet desktop, Microsoft has become a $5 billion partner with AT&T.

Now that AT&T owns Tele-Communications Inc., Microsoft certainly gets to hedge its bets on whether telco or cable TV gets the bandwidth puzzle right. But one might be excused from asking whether Microsoft might get any antitrust advice for its AT&T investment. After all, a few well-heeled veterans must be left over from the biggest corporate breakup in history.

Hewlett-Packard. This is a $50 billion-plus hardware company in the era of free PCs, but it is determined not to miss out on the real Internet growth. In surprisingly rapid fashion, HP has turned up a number of very eye-popping friendships.

The most noteworthy are Qwest Communications and PSInet. But these are not your run-of-the-mill efforts to form a PC/Internet access bundle. HP is not interested in connecting home users with cheap Internet links. Rather, HP wants to help ISPs become application providers, offering companies access to databases, e-mail and more on a per-use basis.

HP execs call the applications-for-lease program "Apps-on-Tap" and note it offers communications providers a way to move away from just selling pipes. Fair enough, but doesn't the ISP also help HP get out from under the free PC business?

Sun Microsystems. The company that has set itself up as synonymous with the Internet and e-commerce is in danger of losing some ground - and all because of one particular friend - er, customer. Famed over-crowded auction site eBay has failed at least three times in the past month. The failure last June, when the Sun-powered (or not-so-powered) site went down for nearly a day, cost eBay an estimated $5 million.

That could have real implications for some of Sun's mega-Internet customers, even if they don't bid on e-Bay.

The timing of this episode might be considered unfortunate, as Sun is about to unveil its next generation browser and server plans for powering America Online to new heights.

Under the terms of AOL's purchase of browser creator Netscape Communications, Sun and Net-scape will merge e-commerce, messaging, directory, security and application technologies.

Is it bush league to ask if this cool new software really is so cool? Or if it might run better on someone else's hardware?

Infoseek. This search engine company has proved that the Internet also is open to rash behavior by non-propeller heads. Infoseek shareholders are suing The Walt Disney Co., claiming that Disney purposely waited until Infoseek stock was depressed before announcing its intention to purchase the company.

When it comes to the Internet, it appears that what goes up must always go higher. Many Infoseek shareholders have enjoyed a nine-fold increase in the stock since it went public in 1996.

By the way, Disney wants the rest of Infoseek to combine the search engine with its other Internet properties (including online assets of ESPN and ABC) into a single Internet entity, to be called Go.com.

Well, that's it for the "Internet Friends or Foe" list. And yes, we could have mentioned other companies with other friend-or-foe motives. If you have any nominations, I would love to hear them.