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

To: Dell-icious who wrote (12527)	8/4/1998 11:32:00 AM
From: IceShark	Respond to of 164684

Dell, I've got a sneaking suspicion that a primary motivation on the PlanetAll acquisition is to mine the personal information for profit. This fits perfectly into AMZN's current scheme of profiling customers to push tailored sales (and who knows what else i.e. selling customer info.) I see backlash possibilities. Regards, DWW

To: Dell-icious who wrote (12527)	8/4/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I don't know...

To: Dell-icious who wrote (12527)	8/4/1998 12:31:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

These acquisitions are both a smart strategic move and a recognition of the extremely competitive environment that the internet is likely to become. Although the details of the deals are not clear, it appears that Amazon is paying for the two companies with inflated stock. If the stock buy-out is not indexed to the price - it is a fixed number of shares, then the $280 million price tag may be cheap. In effect, Amazon will have paid 1/4-1/3 the amount because of the hyper inflated stock price. Junglee is similar (actually a knock-off) of the shopping directory service or a muted "Shop Bot" concept originated by Jango. It's interesting to note that Excite purchased the company that developed Jango just a few months ago. Planet All is similar in concept to HotMail.com but offers more extensive services. It's interesting to note that Microsoft.Monopolygame.com has acquired HotMail.com and is molding it into a strategic part of its web portal efforts. MS's strategic plan is to marry HotMail into the new portal effort and make it highly integrated with MS Outlook and MS Office products. The efforts of MS and Amazon.com are of necessity becoming strategically very similar. Amazon.com has seen into the future and the looming threat of competition scares them. Management has come to recognize that portals and shop bots will play a pivotal role in e-commerce. I found it interesting that neither of these shop bots do a full internet search but, rather, search only the indexed database for the companies that pay to sign up for the service. I searched Junglee for one book and surprisingly did not find Amazon.com as one of the merchants: junglee.com At first glance this looks like a good strategic move by Amazon.com. It remains to be seen how they will meld this into their developing portal strategy and how that new fabric will develop into a profit making company. It still is not clear how these efforts play to enhance the Associates program, the most vital part of Amazon's success. The effect of highly leveraged acquisitions and continued emphasis on mass markets rather than "associative enterprise" efforts may prove to be the undoing of Amazon's survival.