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

To: Eric Wells who wrote (81717)	10/22/1999 6:09:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Olu - you're right - Amazon does have every right to sue. However, I view the lawsuit as frivolous - as I see the patent as having no legal legs to stand on. Eric, BNBN said the suit was without merit. I just see this as another way for AMZN to burn more cash and they sure are buring cash. The burn rate continues to increase. Glenn

To: Eric Wells who wrote (81717)	10/22/1999 6:55:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Internet companies spend more and more on branding By Andrea Orr PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct 22 (Reuters) - From the very beginning, Internet companies have warned investors that they would forego short-term profits in favor of long-term investing to build their businesses and their brands. But after enthusiastically endorsing this strategy for months, some investors are beginning to wonder how much spending is too much. The stocks of two prominent Internet companies fell sharply on Friday, one day after they released earnings reports that looked strong on the surface, but predicted spending on sales and marketing would accelerate. Shares of the online technology site Cnet Inc., <CNET.O> which is planning to spend some $40 million on advertising in its fourth quarter, fell $6.19 to $47.38 on Friday. The Internet technology company Inktomi Corp., <INKT.O>which also said it would increase spending on sales and marketing, tumbled $17.44 to $103.06 per share. Although both companies reported robust revenue growth and smaller losses than had been forecast, some investors focused on their expensive budgets. Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget cut his near-term rating on Inktomi to neutral from accumulate, remarking that while the company remains the clear leader in Internet infrastructure, "it appears to be having to invest more in sales and marketing and product development than we expected to maintain its leadership position and growth rate." Cnet and Inktomi are by no means the the only companies spending aggressively on marketing. Internet retail giant Amazon.com Inc.<AMZN.O> has repeatedly deferred profits to invest more in its brand, spending $86 million into sales and marketing in the latest quarter. And AltaVista, which is overhauling its bare-bones Internet portal into a flashier, more commercial service, plans to put $120 million into advertising between now and July to build a strong brand identity. As common as the practice has become, the concern meeting more of these large-spending budgets highlights a quandary facing the industry. In the land-grab mentality of online business, name recognition is critical for any company that hopes to be a market leader. But when advertising spending starts to exceed revenues, as it has for some companies, it becomes a very risky gamble. "It's fine to a certain extent, but when does it stop?" says Darren Chervitz, senior analyst at the Jacob Internet Fund in New York. "I absolutely understand the important reasons to advertise, but it does worry me. You wonder if companies will have to turn off the spigot at some point." Cnet, which drew a lot of attention over the summer when it unveiled a $100 million advertising campaign, Thursday said it would accelerate spending, with $40 million allocated for the fourth quarter alone. To put this in perspective, Cnet's third-quarter revenues totaled $28.4 million. Still, many industry analysts said they were more comfortable with Cnet's costly ad campaign than with those of many other dot com companies. "Cnet had to emerge from the crowd (of online technology sites), and had already proven themselves able to make a profit," said Bob Walberg, an analyst with Briefing.com in Chicago. "I'm not sure I can say the same for Amazon. In my opinion Amazon has already succeeded in building a brand. I'm not sure they have to continue spending so much." Others argued that Amazon, still widely known as an online bookseller, needs to build awareness in the breadth of its business, as a kind of online Wal-Mart. Which raises the question of whether such massive spending on brand is really only a short-term requirement, as many of these companies have maintained. "Cnet is a company that was making profits (before the new ad campaign), but if you ask the vast majority of people, even those who are tech-savvy, if they know Cnet, maybe they do and maybe they don't," says Chervitz, who notes brand building ...

To: Eric Wells who wrote (81717)	10/22/1999 7:36:00 PM
From: re3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

from bill f's column.. The clock is ticking... I want to share a quote sent by a reader who pulled it off a Yahoo message board to describe the present environment. "We are all at a wonderful ball, where the champagne sparkles in every glass and the soft laughter falls upon the summer air. We know, by the rules, that at some moment the Black Horseman will come shattering through the great terrace doors, wreaking vengeance and scattering the survivors. Those who leave early are saved, but the ball is so splendid no one wants to leave while there is still time, so that everyone keeps asking, 'What time is it? What time is it?' But none of the clocks have any hands."

To: Eric Wells who wrote (81717)	10/27/1999 12:18:00 AM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Eric, I agree. The PTO (www.uspto.gov) was created to promote invention and protect inventors and companies who create novel processes or designs that are not in the public domain or in use and that are not obvious to someone "versed in the art" in the area the patent applies. I've looked at the Amazon.com patent and find, IMO, that the PTO erred in granting it on several grounds. The Amazon patent describes a simple process using information stored on a server site computer, such as customer credit card and shipping address information and combining that with client side generated information derived from a single click response such as for product selection to directly enter a purchase order. It differentiates itself from the "shopping cart" analog by circumventing intermediate steps between product selection and product check out or initiation of the fulfillment process. Maybe Amazon.com implemented this first on the Internet, but IMO, this neither fulfills the requirement of being an invention that was not in the public domain or that was not obvious to almost any idiot versed in the art. Earlier forms of simplified purchasing for pre-qualified customers have long been established in EDI systems. EDI stands for Electronic Data Interchange, a category of systems that companies and the government has been using for years to enable automated purchasing. Once the user has been properly registered into some systems, they just order away without any thought of a 'shopping cart' check out and verification system. So what makes the Internet unique except for the tons of hype? Does the fact that the consumer can access it with a common, non-proprietary system make what you do on the Internet unique? That is ridiculous. That's like saying an Internet software patent is only good if you run it on a PC platform and someone is free to patent the same thing if they design the same functionality to run on a MacIntosh. I haven't spent hours researching precedent beyond what I know from personal experience and prior research on the subject that dates back well before Amazon?s use of the 1 click 'technology'. I do know that in such public groups as the W3C organization and various user groups had long ago (in Internet time) discussed and formulated methods for storing common user information so that it would not need to be re-entered to perform such tasks as purchase verification and consumer routing. Various formats for using Open Profiling Standards information and Platform for Privacy information was openly discussed and classified. This 'technology' was considered in a public forum with the Internet that it be openly available to all who wished to use it. Years ago, I had discussed the single click method with programmers of shopping cart and merchant systems software. A few of these early programmers said that it was possible to fairly easily set up a site to do single click purchasing, tract customer referrals and other techniques that are now practiced widely. Easy because it was a common capability to gather shipping, payment or billing preferences in the process of registering potential customers and also of storing a cookie so that the particular customer can be identified to the server system upon re-visiting the site. Pulling up the information keyed by the cookie to combine it with specific order input was not just an obvious extension of current practice but was often discussed as an objective and prospect for implementation. The mere fact that Amazon.com was among the first to seize on the opportunity does not merit the distinction of uniqueness of invention, IMO. Another area of 'prior art' that probably conflicts with this 'invention' is found in the work of on-line credit or e-card providers and with 'wallet' systems. In the e-card case, customer information can be stored on the servers of the credit clearing company or provider such that the customer does not have to re-enter the information at each vendor or shopping incident. Use of these systems has included the 1 (single) click modality popularized by Amazon.com. In the case of 'wallet' type systems, the customer information is typically stored on the customers (client side) computer and rendered to the site requesting it. The purpose of these systems is at least partly to reduce repetitive entry and simplify the users experience. I find it utterly fantastic that the PTO granted Amazon.com a patent in the first place (congrats Perkins Coie for a fine job sleeping with the PTO!) and even more incredulous that Bezos has the gumption to state that he deserves the patent in order to protect his large investment in developing it. Yea right - more like his large investment hiring the muscle of attorneys to pursue the patent. The purpose of the PTO is not to turn property in the public domain into the exclusive property of a few large corporations. sure the PTO has turned into a training ground for attorneys who latter make a killing working for corporations - just antother example how power (money) corrupts. Is this what the Internet is all about? I think this is a clash between the corporate state and the emerging new world order made possible, if not inevitable, by the decentralized nature of the Internet. IMO, this amounts to robbery from the American (international) public of the worst kind! Keep the net stay free and equal access the way it was intended. We don't need robber baron moguls lording their control over it. What I find even more fantastic is the attitude of the beloved Jeffrey (Daumer) Besos who spouts off stuff about looking after consumers best interests and providing them with great user experiences yet flagrantly want to plagiarize others works. Robber barons should be run off the Internet as the antithesis to free enterprise. All these are just my frail personal opinions of course.