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

To: Ed Zhao who wrote (11623)	7/24/1998 12:43:00 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Hi Ed Zhao; You're right about the browsers... Took a look at that lateset AMZN revenue report. This quarter's sales are up 33%. But a year ago, sales were up 74%. My guess is that AMZN is soon to reduce growth to that of the internet itself, rather than the hyper growth they enjoyed last year. This would indicate to me that profitability will have to be delayed farther into the future. I've been busy, and haven't looked through the thread. Did anybody post quotes from the article in Seattle Weekly written by the guy who got fired from an e-mail response job at AMZN? I'll look around for a link, just in case... Found it: Evidently--at least according to her feedback that day -- it violated department protocol to provide extemporaneous suggestions about topics and titles that the rep found relevant to the customer's topic of interest. If someone expressed interest in historical fiction about the Civil War period, for instance, and mentioned James Michener's Centennial, it was apparently out of our purview to suggest that perhaps Gore Vidal's Lincoln might better suit her purposes--even though this is precisely the kind of helpful human input expected of employees in any quality bookstore. The preferred way to handle such a situation, I was advised, was simply to tell the customer how to locate and order Centennial (even if you knew that it had precious little to do with the Civil War), then include a blurb from the index suggesting he or she sign up for "Eyes," the programmed topical referral service that harangues signees from now till eternity with "helpful" future purchasing suggestions. How I "escaped" from amazon.com Go to the link below, and click for the article in the July 16, 1998 issue with the above title: seattleweekly.com -- Carl