Wall Street’s blind spot to the howl of cash-strapped pain represented by Digital Equipment Corp’s need to give away a piece of AltaVista Internet Software Inc in order to raise the cash the new subsidiary requires to build its business meant that DEC’s shares, which had been down a modest 12.5 cents at $37.25 immediately before the news of the flotation plans, jumped a dollar as the news broke. DEC will also be hoping that AltaVista will be seen as rather more than simply a search engine comp any. Lycos Inc opened the week valued at $85.3m, Infoseek Corp at $63m and Excite Inc at $70.9m. Whereas Yahoo! Corp, more of a brand than a search engine company as it actually uses the AltaVista engine these days, is, at $21.125, still valued at about $543m. It floated at $13.
