of user.
White waves off those concerns. "If you could own CBS (dossier) and ABC (dossier) wouldn't you?" he says in response to the alleged AltaVista-Lycos overlap. Indeed, White argues that CMGI's big advantage is that all its portals and companies can share infrastructure and other resources, driving costs down and traffic up. Analysts agree. "The infrastructure is really expensive," said Jim Nail, a senior analyst at Forrester Research (FORR). "Separately funded, they couldn't scale; they couldn't afford to build first-class sites."
And only with first-class sites will CMGI have a shot at being understood. "Ultimately I think their ability to compete is going to be based on having this vast array of services to offer people," said David Marshak, a senior VP at Patricia Seybold Group. "The challenge is to integrate those services into a single story."
