At least one U.S. state will pass an Internet sales tax. That is, when a person is ordering a product over the Internet, the state they sit in will collect an additional sales tax. This will produce countless millions of dollars of income for such states as California. However, it will create a vast new market for masking software so people can appear to be ordering products in states which don't have the tax. Microsoft Network has never taken off.
Nobody cares much about it, and few people use it.
In an attempt to corner more of the Internet, Microsoft will offer all MSN users to America On Line, and AOL will jump at the chance. The affiliation between AOL and MSN creates a supergroup of Internet users numbering some 15 million. Microsoft buys search engines. We predict that Microsoft will make moves to purchase one or more of the major search engines. Excite will become the default search engine on the Microsoft website.