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To: Benny Baga who wrote (5897)	7/16/1998 9:48:00 AM
From: AE	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8545

Microsoft's 4-Way Ecommerce Invasion Jesse Berst, Editorial Director ZDNet AnchorDesk You know about ecommerce. How big it is. How much bigger it will be soon. Don't believe me? Annette recently reported that ecommerce will become a trillion-dollar industry by 2000. Click for full story. You may even know about a few of Microsoft's ecommerce experiments. Expedia, for instance, its highly successful travel site. Or Investor, its finance site. What you may not know is that these early initiatives are just the first forays. In the months ahead, Microsoft will roll out a full-scale ecommerce invasion. One that is almost guaranteed to destroy some of today's old-style businesses. Here's Microsoft's four-step ecommerce battle plan: 1. Amass world-class commerce capabilities in key areas. In case you haven't noticed, this is already well underway. Microsoft's ecommerce ventures include: Investor: Money management, transactions HomeAdvisor: Real estate services Expedia: Travel services Carpoint: Auto sales Sidewalk: Will soon have ticketing capabilities 2. Aggregate eyeballs. When Microsoft Internet Start launches later this year it will replace Microsoft's current portals MSN and home.microsoft.com. Start will become the front door for everyone who wants a Microsoft page, whether it's to check out software upgrades or make a travel reservation via Expedia. Plus, it will also be Internet Explorer's default page. Web trackers Relevant Knowledge, Media Metrix and Hot 100 continually rank Microsoft as the fourth most-visited site on the Web and MSN has two million members. That's a lot of potential customers. 3. Force feed these people the Microsoft ecommerce sites. Microsoft will give its sites prime portal real estate. For now it appears Microsoft is excluding competing services. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Microsoft didn't respond to Preview Travel's attempt to buy distribution on Start. 4. Once successfully funneling eyeballs start knocking off other ecommerce categories. This will accelerate after the first of the year. So if you're in a high-traffic, high-dollar ecommerce area and you think you're safe from Microsoft ... think again. It just hasn't gotten around to putting you out of business yet. In fairness, AOL and Netcenter and all the rest are trying just as hard to siphon off ecommerce money. The difference is they are charging partners for access to eyeballs -- giving some hope for competition and choice. Microsoft is not selling to the highest bidder. It's giving its services a free ride and excluding consumers from competing services, and using its dominance in operating systems to create dominance in browsers to create dominance in Web sites to lock out other ecommerce players. I don't want to get into the politics of whether this is good or bad. I just wanted to let you know where things are headed. What do you think of Microsoft's ecommerce strategy? Does it unfairly disadvantage consumers and competitors? Use the TalkBack button below to tell me and I'll post the best responses beneath this article. Or go to my Berst Alerts forum where a discussion is already underway. P.S. Elsewhere in this issue you can learn more about ecommerce from my friends at Inter@ctive Investor. Eric Fleming reveals what works in e-tailing. Larry Barrett shares auction house sites' secrets to success. And Larry Dignan reveals why profits elude online retailers. Click for full story.