Lori Mirek left this summer after a brief tenure as vice president and general manager of Netscape Business Solutions for AOL, the company confirmed. Prior to AOL's acquisition of Netscape in March, Mirek was Netscape's senior vice president of marketing.
Mirek left to pursue other opportunities following a "little bit of a reorganization and reallocation of resources" in her division, an AOL representative said today. AOL declined to comment further, but a source close to the company said Mirek was not happy with the position that remained after the reorganization.
Mirek could not be reached for comment.
In the August reorganization, AOL moved Netscape Business Solutions, responsible for sales of Netscape's e-commerce products to AOL partners and other customers, from under the oversight of AOL Interactive Services chief operating officer Mayo Stuntz to that of Netcenter division head Jim Martin. Mirek was not replaced.
Mirek is hardly alone among Netscape executives who have left AOL or scaled back their duties significantly since the acquisition. Just last week, key Netscape executive Barry Ariko said he was stepping down from his role as deputy general manager representing AOL and Netscape in the Sun-AOL alliance, but that he would remain at AOL for the time being.
After acquiring Netscape in March, AOL trumpeted the roles that Mirek, Ariko, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, and Netcenter general manager Mike Homer would play in the new organization. In a statement, AOL said Mirek would have "significant responsibilities in the Interactive Services Group."
Six months later, Mirek is gone, Ariko has given up his position, Marc Andreessen has relinquished his title as AOL's chief technology officer, and Homer has stepped aside as general manager of Netcenter. In addition to these developments, a substantial exodus followed the merger.
Gemstar, known for its VCR programming technology, is expanding into new markets with the acquisition of TV Guide. While TV Guide is best known for its print publications, it also operates a fast growing and popular service called TV Guide Interactive that holds significant strategic importance for Gemstar.
TV Guide Interactive is an "electronic programming guide," or EPG, which lets viewers check listings by time, channel, category, or name, and use the service for such conveniences as scanning program schedules in advance. While such uses sound simple, they present enormous business opportunities as the EPG becomes one of the most-used applications in the digital TV set-top boxes that are being developed and deployed by cable companies.
"The electronic programming guide is going to be the TV portal to any of the interactive stuff that is to come," said Leslie Ellis, analyst with Paul Kagan Associates.
These guides are important because they will be the equivalent of Web browsers for cable and satellite TV, allowing consumers to navigate an increasingly complicated array of program choices. They are cited by consumers as the most popular reason to subscribe to the new digital TV offerings from cable companies.
As such, EPGs are a significant piece of screen real estate to control, especially as cable companies start to use these guides to offer viewers the ability to buy merchandise related to ads or shows they've seen.
"The combined company will have the technology, sales force, and advertiser customer base to be well positioned to compete in these highly competitive areas of advertising and e-commerce on a global basis," said Joe Kiener, chairman and CEO of TV Guide, in a prepared statement.
Ellis said TV Guide already has agreements to use its EPG with the majority of cable operators, including AT&T. There are about 2.3 million users of TV Guide's EPG currently, and that number is growing rapidly as cable operators deploy digital cable services to more communities. TV Guide also has 28 million viewers of its older TV Guide Channel service, which isn't interactive, over 73,000 visitors to its online site, and 34 million readers of its magazine publication.
Gemstar, meanwhile, has solid hooks into the consumer electronics industry. Its technology has been licensed to most major TV and VCR makers and is available on a worldwide basis.
This combination could make it harder for other companies competing in this space--including Microsoft, with its WebTV offering, America Online, and Excite@Home--to get their technology into next-generation digital TVs and cable set-tops.
The move also puts battles over technology standards for digital television in a different light. Consumer electronics and cable companies have been wrangling over issues such as passing digitized data from a cable set-top to a TV set. The new company, called TV Guide International, has an opportunity to become a bridge between the two groups--and to profit from that position.
Gemstar said TV Guide shareholders will get 45 percent of the newly combined company. The acquisition price represents a 32.4 percent premium for TV Guide's shares, based on Friday's closing price of 41.05. Gemstar also will assume $600 million in debt to pay for the transaction.
Gemstar chief executive Henry Yuen will hold the same position in the new company. The board of directors will be expanded to 12 members, with six appointed by each company.
Gemstar said the combined company will have revenues in excess of $1.5 billion and yearly earnings of $400 million.
Trading in both companies was halted prior to the announcement of the acquisition. TV Guide closed at 41.56, up slightly. Gemstar gained 4.06 on the day to 87.68 before trading was stopped.
Bloomberg contributed to this report. Microsoft has fixed a security hole that threatened the privacy of its 40 million Hotmail users in August, according to the results of an outside audit released today.
The announcement disclosed only that a "Big Five" accounting firm reviewed the "nature, extent, and cause of the problem," as well as the solutions that Microsoft put in place. As part of the audit, Microsoft employees who fixed the hole were interviewed, and the unnamed firm tested the solution to make sure the problem wouldn't reoccur.
As previously reported, the review of Hotmail was commissioned after the service was pulled offline for two hours when it was discovered that accounts could be accessed without passwords as long as a user's name--which is commonly found in a Hotmail address--was known.
Microsoft said it fixed the problem the same day and has since admitted that the hole was the result of a string of code that hadn't been tested for security.
Microsoft in August voluntarily agreed to the audit at the request of the Web privacy seal program Truste. Until today, however, there had been doubts about whether any results of the audit would be made public.
Based on guidelines set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), which oversees the conduct of major firms, Microsoft and others participating in the audit were restricted from releasing the accounting firm's full report.
"Both Microsoft and Truste have confirmed that we've effectively resolved that incident, and that we are in compliance with Truste's licensing agreement," Richard Purcell, data practices director at Microsoft, said today.
"The firm had technical experts, and they were careful about reviewing the solutions we put in place at the code level," he added.
Truste, which monitors participating sites' privacy practices, asked the company to undergo a voluntary review by an unnamed Big Five accounting firm. Truste licensees must ensure they will "help protect the security" of the information they store.
Watchdogs skeptical
But consumer advocacy group Junkbusters had called for full
disclosure of the report, insisting that if the results weren't made public, Hotmail users would have no assurance that their accounts are safeguarded.
Despite the announcement that Hotmail is secure, Jason Catlett, founder of Junkbusters, was not satisfied with the level of detail in the companies' announcement.
"All Microsoft and Truste are saying is that someone went in with a notebook and pen and asked questions, but the company is not revealing the name of the auditor or the instructions to the auditor--the summary is vague," Catlett said. "They had the chance to commission an audit that could have been open."
Specifically, Microsoft had commissioned an "Agreed-Upon Procedures Engagement," in which the parameters of the review are set by the certified public account, the client, and usually a specified third party, in this case Truste. The results of this type of report can only be made available to those parties, according to the AICPA.
The online industry and the Clinton administration have endorsed so-called privacy seal programs as a way to safeguard anonymity. But as more Net users provide valuable personal information in exchange for goods and custom Web content, privacy advocates say better laws are needed to shield privacy, because industry guidelines don't come with strong enough enforcement.
Truste says its voluntary efforts are effective.
"From our point of view this does demonstrate that the resolution process we have in place works," said Bob Lewin, executive director of Truste.
But for Microsoft, the review only puts to rest concern over the August 20 Hotmail security hole. The company has since been investigating programs that people could use to generate false passwords to crack open Hotmail accounts.
Ten months since releasing its SQL Server 7.0 database software, Microsoft has designed an upgrade, code-named Shiloh, that the company hopes will better compete with rivals Oracle, IBM, Informix, and Sybase.
Microsoft has shipped the initial beta version of this next-generation database software, featuring more Web support and improved analysis of business information.
Like its competitors, Microsoft is hawking its new SQL Server as the database needed for building e-commerce Web sites. The new SQL Server database is part of Microsoft's recently announced Web-based software development push, which includes new development tools and the forthcoming Windows 2000 operating system for businesses.
Microsoft ranks fourth in the overall database market, behind Oracle, IBM, and Informix, which includes sales of databases that support Windows NT and Unix operating systems. But in the Windows NT-only database market, Microsoft is in second place--behind Oracle but ahead of IBM--according to an International Data Corporation study.
Analysts say Microsoft's future success in the database market hinges on the success of its forthcoming Windows 2000 operating system, due by the end of this year. Microsoft has worked to make the forthcoming business operating system faster and more reliable to better compete against the Unix operating system.
Improved operating system performance may entice more businesses to use Windows as their operating system, and that in turn could drive Microsoft's database sales, said IDC analyst Carl Olofson.
"It's going to be tough. They could possibly overtake Informix and move into third place, but I have a hard time imagining they could overtake IBM, and certainly not Oracle, in the overall market," Olofson said. "But if you look at NT, you could have a horse race between Microsoft and Oracle."
According to IDC, Microsoft earned $496 million, or 5.1 percent of the overall database market, in 1998. Oracle led the pack with 40 percent of the market, or $3.9 billion in revenue; IBM was second with $1.7 billion in revenue, or 18 percent; and Informix was third, with $556 million in revenue, or 5.8 percent of the market.
Barry Goffe, Microsoft's lead product manager for SQL Server, said Windows 2000 and Shiloh, its next-generation database, will be powerful and reliable enough for large businesses and e-commerce Web sites.
"There are customers building [high-performance] Web sites today on SQL Server 7.0 and Windows NT 4, and Shiloh and Windows 2000 will offer major improvements and performance is not going to be an issue anymore," he said.
Microsoft shipped Shiloh to several hundred customers and partners last week. The company plans to ship a public beta of Shiloh early next year and release a final version by mid-2000. It is already working on a newer, faster version of the database, code-named Yukon, Goffe said.
Shiloh will let its users analyze data with a Web browser for the first time. It will also support XML, a Web standard that simplifies the exchange of data over the Internet and corporate networks, Goffe said.
Microsoft said improvements to its online analytical processing (OLAP) technology will allow users to view simple reports over the Web, such as how products are selling by region or how products are selling by date. "You can slice and dice data over the Internet," Goffe said.
The software giant has built "data mining" capabilities into Shiloh--technology that spits out more complex reports by examining the business information and seeking out patterns and trends, Goffe said. Businesses using Shiloh, for example, can build data mining features into their e-commerce or financial applications.
For an e-commerce site, data mining can profile online buyers, predict the kind of products they're interested in, and make purchase suggestions to them, Goffe said.
With Shiloh, Microsoft for the first time will release a lightweight, mobile version of its database for handheld Windows CE devices, a move to compete head-on with rivals such as IBM and Oracle, which already have smaller versions available, Goffe said. The technology will let handheld users connect to their corporate network and download information such as sales data, and upload new data onto the main corporate database.
Olofson, of IDC, said many of the new features Shiloh offers are, or will be, supported by its competitors. The XML support is important, he said, because it allows businesses with different databases to easily exchange data.
"Microsoft is moving in the direction of open standards and Internet-based standards," Olofson said.
Shiloh also features a performance boost. SQL Server currently supports 3 GBytes of memory, but will support up to 64 GBytes of memory in Shiloh. Microsoft's next database will have even better performance, Goffe said.
Unlike Oracle's database, SQL Server 7.0 doesn't allow for load balancing, which is the ability to distribute transactions evenly to prevent the system from overloading, Goffe said. Currently, users of SQL Server can run multiple databases side by side, and if one crashes the other can take over, he said.
One way to offer load balancing, Goffe said, is to allow multiple databases to share and access one hard drive filled with corporate data. Yukon will offer users load balancing by allowing databases to each support its own hard drive, thereby reducing the network bottleneck that occurs in trying to access information, Goffe said.
Olofson said the technology is already available in IBM, Informix, and NCR databases, and that Oracle has created it's own version of the technology. Adding the load balancing feature to a future version of SQL Server could make the Microsoft database fast and reliable enough for large corporations to use for heavy-duty corporate transactions, he said. Right now, most businesses use SQL Server for less-than-critical uses.
Apple Computer appears to be ready to finally launch the successor to the immensely popular iMac.
Apple posted a message on its Web site inviting customers to view a "special event" tomorrow. In anticipation of the news, Apple stock was up almost 3 points, or 4.51 percent, today, closing at 64.5.
Industry sources expect that Apple will use tomorrow's occasion to formally launch the next-generation iMac along with the new Mac OS 9 operating system software.
The new iMacs are expected to have faster chips and, for the first time, DVD players, sources said. The new iMacs themselves have been ready to go into volume production, but they needed certain software technology present in the OS 9 before they could ship, said one source familiar with the matter.
Apple declined to comment.
New iMacs would come at a time when two other recently introduced products are in short supply, say various resellers contacted by CNET News.com. The iBook notebook computer, introduced in July, was shipped to customers in September--as Apple promised--but only in extremely limited quantities.
Also, the high-end Power Mac G4 systems, especially those with the fastest chips, have been delayed and have only recently started to trickle into customers' hands. Those delays will cause Apple to post lower earnings for the fourth fiscal quarter of 1999 than had been anticipated, the company has said. Apple will report earnings on October 13. Consensus analysts estimates of earnings are now at 45 cents per share, according to First Call.
Anticipation builds
Reseller sources note that Apple has been instructing them to pare down
inventory of the current iMacs. Historically, such moves have preceeded the
launch of new products.
Apple itself has been hinting at the introduction of new products, including the new Power Mac G4 systems, since July. During a conference call, chief financial officer Fred Anderson told financial analysts to expect product transitions in the December quarter (which is the first fiscal quarter of 2000 for Apple).
Apple has previously said that Mac OS 9 would be available in mid-October. Among the features are an update to the Sherlock search technology which would make online shopping easier, as well as offer Apple opportunities to boost revenues by becoming an e-commerce portal. The new OS will be available for $99, Apple has stated previously.
Will new products restore sheen?
Apple has lost some of its luster as a result of the product availability
issues, but analysts have not expressed concern that the issues will last
into the next quarter, mostly because things such as processor availability
were out of Apple's control. A new product launch often has resulted in a
lift for Apple's stock price, and should help boost investor confidence in
the company.
Retailers and financial analysts alike are anticipating that the revised iMacs should be popular items in the upcoming holiday selling season. The systems could be even more popular if Apple decided to offer rebates for Internet service, like other PC companies, analysts say.
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