But when he researched the purchase of a water softener, all he got was product puffery. And he spent five hours over three days searching for historical stock data. Finally, he got off the Information Superhighway, into his car, and onto Interstate 10, down to the Phoenix public library. There, he spent less than an hour getting the information from microfilm. These internal networks work like the Internet and can communicate with it but are built for a company's own employees, big customers, and suppliers.
Intranets aid collaboration by pulling together data on incompatible computers.
Why am I not surprised. Such a company generally needs an intranet before it can get on the internet. Big Internet service providers such as MCI Communications Corp. and Sprint Corp. have long accepted traffic from many of the smaller ones without demanding payment. But that practice has become onerous. All others must pay.