The perception here is that traffic on the Internet was weak and, definitely, Yahoo!'s numbers are going to be used as a proxy or benchmark for the other players in the space.

There is a strong perception that by not having exposure to the Internet, those prospects are vastly lower than they used to be.

[Another shift in perception surrounds the specialization of knowledge.] In the early nineties, I went from being a generalist - Campbell's Soup kind of stuff - to focusing on high tech, ... Headhunters said, 'Don't do that, you'll put a cap on your career.' Old school advertising could be very surface-y. You didn't have to do a lot of research for a 30-second commercial.

Two companies have benefited from the time-to-market advantage: Yahoo! and Amazon. Those are the single success stories. Every single day, it gets more and more competitive.

The stocks that have been successful are the ones that have reached a very large scale which is to say critical mass basically.

The feel I've got is a lot of these guys are in for the long haul. If they wanted to sell out they could have sold out much earlier.