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To: umbro who wrote (12612)	8/4/1998 11:52:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

Im probably wrong about that unless there is some connection we're not aware of.

To: umbro who wrote (12612)	8/5/1998 4:13:00 AM
From: zax	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

New York Times: August 5, 1998 Amazon.com Is Expanding Beyond Books By SAUL HANSELL In a move indicating that its aspirations extend to selling far more than books over the Internet, Amazon.com said yesterday that it had bought the Junglee Corporation, which operates a service that lets people shop for everything from clothing to computers. Separately, Amazon.com also bought Planet All, which operates a vast Internet address service that allows people to stay in touch with their friends and associates. Amazon.com hopes to sell books and its expanding variety of goods to Planet All's 1.5 million members. Amazon.com will exchange stock worth $187 million -- at Monday's closing price -- for Junglee and stock worth $93 million for Planet All. Both companies are privately held. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Related Articles A New Venture for Amazon.com: Musical Offerings (July 9, 1998) There's Room for Every Book in a Virtual Bookstore (March 9, 1998) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Amazon.com has grown to be the most successful merchant on the Internet, with 3.1 million customers. It posted sales of $203 million in the first half, a nearly fivefold increase from the comparable period a year earlier. Its losses, totaling $30 million in the first half, have also accelerated, but not quite as fast. Still, the company's stock has surged, bringing the paper wealth of Jeff Bezos, the former stock trader who founded the company, to more than $2.5 billion. So far, Amazon.com's only expansion beyond books has been to add music compact disks earlier this year. But Bezos said in an interview yesterday, "We're at an inflection point where we are now looking at a broader range of products." In contrast to its handling of books and music, Amazon.com does not necessarily plan to sell other products directly, Bezos said. Rather, it will help customers find merchandise from other Internet stores. "Our focus has always been to help people find and discover things they want to buy," Bezos said. "We're not limited to selling our own stuff." While Bezos declined to discuss how the company expected to earn money from this plan, analysts said the most likely way was to earn a commission from stores to which it refers customers. Indeed, that is one of the main business lines of Junglee, which makes software to pull together disparate information from all over the Internet for comparison. Junglee operates comparison shopping services, offered on various Internet sites including Yahoo, that let users see the prices and terms for all sorts of products. What is not disclosed on these sites is that some companies that Junglee lists in these comparisons pay Junglee for referrals. Indeed, Junglee's site on Yahoo shows that Amazon.com does not offer the lowest prices for many books. Bezos said that under Amazon.com's wing, Junglee would cut back on this sort of price comparison. "We don't think that customers find price comparisons very useful," he said. "We would rather help people discover exactly what they're looking for on line." Bezos declined to say when Amazon.com would start offering new services through Junglee, but he said that the company's expansion would be relatively slow. In contrast, Amazon.com has already started exploiting the sales opportunities on Planet All through e-mail messages that encourage members to buy birthday gifts for their friends from Amazon.com. Planet All users enter their name, phone numbers, address, birthday and other information into the system, and they specify which other members can see that information. That way when they move, for example, all of their contacts are notified of the change. The company, founded by Warren Adams, a former banking consultant, has added a range of features such as the ability to network by searching lists of the friends of your friends. So far the company has not taken in much money, Adams said. But it had hoped to sell advertising on its site and link up with corporations that wanted to offer its service as a benefit for their customers. Adams said that Amazon.com had hoped to make the Planet All address directory available on its site so that people would be able to look up easily where to send gifts. Originally, Planet All planned to offer such capability to many online stores. Bezos said that dealings with Amazon.com's competitors would be reduced, but not eliminated. "We wouldn't let Barnes & Noble advertise on the Planet All site," he said.