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

To: Bearded One who wrote (82316)	10/28/1999 5:40:00 PM
From: Wizard	Respond to of 164684

I would admit that the online book market is going to get competitive. However, Amazon is adding categories. Their business model hasn't changed. They are a platform for ecommerce. As ecommerce evolves, Amazon will evolve with it. If that means Banana Republic can't sell anything online because it can't get eyeballs, they might be willing to pay Amazon for some sales through Amazon's platform. That is not a change to the basic biz model. AOL's platform is based on eyeballs and members. Most people aren't frugal buyers, they buy brands. There will always be a market for Yugo's but it will always be a niche. That is Netzero's market as well - the niche non-brand buyer. Amazon is clearly a brand.

To: Bearded One who wrote (82316)	10/28/1999 6:10:00 PM
From: Wizard	Respond to of 164684

I would argue that AOL's lock-in was not always viewed as such by the investing public. Everybody thought that AOL was going to lose to Microsoft because it was easier to click on MSN when you bought a computer. The phone companies were then going to put AOL out of business as AOL could be bypassed. There were countless other killers like when the web itself was going to crush AOL as users supposedly didn't want an online service vs the internet, and then there was broadband that was going to kill AOL. As it turned out, AOL stock has been historically quite volatile but they just kept churning out growth in members. Only in retrospect can say that AOL had e-mail lock-in and that is what is different than AMZN. The argument is slightly different but the tone is the same looking at present facts and not with 20/20 hindsight. I would argue that the customer experience at AMZN is a tremendous lock-in. I personally love the AMZN site and have never paid barnesandnoble.com or cdnow.com a dime. I look forward to spending lots more dollars at Amazon along with the rest of mainstream America. Saving $0.50 on a CD isn't all that important to me just as most of America is spending $20 to AOL and not $9.95 to xyz-isp. Email lock-in at AOL and customer service lock-in at AMZN might end up producing the same results. By the way, I anticipate sending AMZN well over a few hundred $$$ this Q4 in Christmas related sales. If they start moving those DVD players and digital cameras, the floodgates might give in. 16mm x $35 = $560mm in Q4 sales. > $2b run-rate. 40mm x $33 = >$5b run-rate in Q401. It could happen. AMZN is risky and nobody says it isn't. However, the AMZN model is not broken because $/acct dipped in the summer of '99. Again, AOL hit a speed bump in 1996 and recovered nicely. AMZN hit one in Q2 and now we go up.