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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Bakunin who wrote (73133)	1/10/2000 3:13:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Respond to of 132070

mike, the difference between value america and amazon is simply name recognition. the business plan seems very similar.

To: Michael Bakunin who wrote (73133)	1/10/2000 3:20:00 AM
From: Brian Moore	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

>> any reason to believe the internet will be different? Well, that's a very good question. In the link you provide, Buffet talks about cars and planes. Airplanes are cool, but they did not immediately and dramatically affect the way all the largest companies did business within the first five years after they were invented. In fact, they had almost zero effect on how companies did business during that time period. Even today, they fly people and cargo around a little bit, but it's not that dramatic of an effect on businesses, how they are structured, how they do business. I would say that the emergence of factories about 200 years ago had a huge, huge, huge affect on life and how we do business. That was big! The cool thing about airplanes are that they can go up in the sky and not fall down, and that is really amazing. But realistically speaking, from a business point of view, they did not rock our world. Most business people do not fly around all that much. If they do it's just to go to a meeting or conference or to meet with a client. Some sales people fly around a lot, and there's the cargo thing, but overall the way we do business and the structure of our economic system did not dramatically change just because some people could fly around. Cars are more important, but they did not dramatically affect business that much either. Mostly they are a good way for people to commute, do errands, vacation, drive to see clients more often. IMO, the internet is one of the most important historical innovations we have seen in recorded history. Within just the last five years, every Fortune 500 has already adopted the internet and the web in some way. Companies are now racing to change. The year 2000 will mark the biggest year yet. Fortune 500 companies really did devote huge amounts of resources to addressing Y2K problems, and that peaked last year. Now the big, big item on the agenda is the web. The central question here is whether an investor believes the internet is just an add-on, like planes or cars -- just another product for sale -- or whether the internet will be one of the two or three most transformative changes in recorded history, ranking with the invention of the printing press. What are your thoughts on this?