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ROWAN: Let me comment on that-there are three parts to the Corbis strategy. One is the creation of CD-ROM products, and it hasn't been easy to make money there, but we believe it is possible to make money if one does some extraordinary things both in the development and the distribution of products.

A second part is the professional licensing business, which is being pursued actively by Corbis, in a different way than the existing other stock agencies pursue it-they do it through film, predominantly, we do it in a digital manner exclusively, and that's a business that we are growing and that we can make a lot of money in, and that we're going to go after quite aggressively.

The third part we call online publishing, and that's the one where the business models aren't clear yet. We need to be patient relative to that segment. We have done some things today that we think are very unusual online, and the energy we're putting into that is increasing substantially for 1997. At the same time we don't expect to be able to either see clearly or to cross the profitability line on this third part for some period to come. Getting to profitability and having a business model will take a maturity of advertising within that electronic space; it'll take a maturing-maybe not maturity-of merchandising, of how people can see the products they want to buy and buy them that way, and it'll take in our case a maturing of the way that people access information, be it for education purposes, for entertainment purposes, or to be informed.

One of the visions that Bill Gates had in setting up Corbis was the high school student, doing a term paper, needing a picture of a great person, say Churchill, to use in that paper, and being able to come into Corbis, find it, and for a nominal fee be able to use it, and have that to enhance the term paper that they've created. We know that that is something that has value; we know it's something we can do; how that works overall to provide profitability for that segment of that leg we're not sure, and we need to figure out, and we're going to figure out, but we're going to have to be patient with it, just as some of the other attempts that other companies have made to make money online need to be very patient as well, because some of these dynamics aren't worked out. Until there's a natural way for you and me at home that is comfortable for us, that doesn't feel like we're at night sitting down again in front of the same computer screen that we've escaped and left at our workplace, until it becomes very natural and part of what we do, then it will be hard for many businesses to find a way to make money.

JB: That will happen as the Web environment becomes "the" environment. It becomes another real world.

ROWAN: Let me give you an example that's very current and that we're very excited about. There's fairly well-known company in Seattle called Starbucks. Starbucks is thinking a lot about its stores in the future, and they have thought about the people who come into those stores, and how they differ over the course of a day. And what they want to do is create an experience for them, while they're in the store, buying their coffee drinks, that is different. So Starbucks built a store of the future at Comdex, and they built it inside the Intel booth. They had five large, flat monitors-screens-and they came to Corbis to ask if they could use some Corbis images, to help create the experience that they saw for their stores in the future. We did that. So there are Corbis images being used on these screens at Comdex as we speak, and that is a rather maybe unusual use, but a rather interesting use, of imagery, and there may be other businesses and other venues where a similar kind of a model can be used.

When Jackie Kennedy Onassis died, which was shortly after I joined Corbis, we had a screen-saver for all of the 200 or so systems at Corbis using pictures from the archive. When Jackie died, I was looking at amazing pictures of her on the screen. And I looked at that and I said, This is a product. I mean there is an application here for an ability for a person to have information-in that case it was about that great personality, and I saw pictures of her that I'd never seen before and that would have value to a person, and of course we need to figure out how to package that and make that work, for the people that are partners with Corbis as well as for the consumer.

JB: Can you comment on the relationship between Corbis and Microsoft and also with Bill Gates.

ROWAN: Corbis is a private company; it's owned entirely by Bill Gates, and there is no connection with Microsoft, other than the fact that Bill is the chairman of Corbis and the chairman of Microsoft. So we work hard to sell our products to Microsoft, and we buy their products for our use as we buy from other people in the marketplace. So it's very separate. Bill is very closely tied to the vision and the strategy at Corbis; he spends a number of hours each month with me and the other managers at Corbis, and is a very active component of what we do. Not in the day-to-day sense, but from the standpoint of strategy and vision.

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