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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (62207)	6/13/1999 9:29:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Online auctions is a good use of the Internet but it is easy to do and only a few firms have any significant protection from competitors. eBay has a volume advantage but Amazon has a better executed site, IMO and will gain market share. However, I expect that there will be lots of others, including the local newspapers and syndicates, who will get into the action. If OnSale's and PriceLine's various patents hold up, they may muddy the waters a bit for both eBay and Amazon. In any case, the money this generates in measured in the tens of millions, not the billions that Amazon needs to grow make a profit and justify the stock price.

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (62207)	6/14/1999 7:52:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Microsoft launching service for pagers, cell phone By Martin Wolk SEATTLE, June 14 (Reuters) - Moving aggressively to stake a claim in the wireless Internet market, Microsoft Corp <MSFT.O>. will roll out a service Monday that pushes stock quotes, sports reports and other information to pagers and digital phones. Microsoft's MSN Mobile ultimately will be broadened to other wireless devices and additional data including electronic mail, said Yusuf Mehdi, marketing director in the software giant's consumer and commerce group. He said the Redmond-based company, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its online operations with only mixed success, recently acquired tiny OmniBrowse Inc. in nearby Bellevue, which offered a similar service, allowing MSN to beat other major portal sites and claim bragging rights to what he called the first "wireless Internet portal." America Online Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. have announced similar efforts to capitalize on the proliferation of wireless devices and smart consumer appliances that one day could rival personal computers as a way to plug in to the Internet. "It's all about a vision of providing consumers the ability to access their online information anywhere, anytime, on any device," Mehdi said. "I believe it's a very profound change in how people will use the Web." While the wireless service will be extremely limited at first, Microsoft is working to add interactivity to the system, allowing customers to respond to messages, perform simple transactions and surf the Web using hand-held devices. "You will see a very, very rich proliferation of services," he said. Microsoft's new service follows the company's agreement a month ago to invest $600 million for a 4 percent stake in wireless service provider Nextel and last year's establishment of a joint venture with cellular telephone maker Qualcomm Inc. Under the deals Microsoft plans to roll out wireless Internet services to some 2 million hand-held telephones over the next year, Mehdi said. While many analysts see the services as appealing mostly to a niche market of on-the-go business people, Microsoft is working on expanding wireless capabilities to draw in a broader audience. For example, the company is working on a voice-activation system to enable services that otherwise would be difficult or impossible using the limited keypad and screen size of small devices such as cell phones, said Rodney Vieira, a Microsoft group product manager. Microsoft also hopes to take advantage of a federally mandated feature in future cell phones that will pinpoint their location using satellites. That would make it possible, for example, to get information automatically on nearby stores and restaurants. "As long as there's a pipe there from the services side, we can pump the information to (any) device," Vieira said. "What were waiting on is for the hardware to develop."