Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (20381)	10/6/1998 7:09:00 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

William, may I suggest that you tell Mary Meeker to tell her close friend, Mr Bezos, to buy a faster car to leave Seattle in. <Bertelsmann to Buy 50% Stake in Barnesandnoble.com New York, Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Bertelsmann AG, the world's third-largest media company, said it will buy a 50 percent stake in barnesandnoble.com for $200 million, bolstering the Internet arm of top book retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. Bertelsmann and Barnes & Noble will each also invest $100 million in the No. 2 online bookseller to help accelerate the development of the fast-growing Internet business. The investment from the German publisher, which has said it plans to become a force on the Internet, could help barnesandnoble.com catch up with industry leader Amazon.com, analysts said. Bertelsmann, the world's biggest publisher of English-language books, owns publishers including Random House Inc. and Bantam Doubleday Dell. ''It does provide a deep-pocketed investor at a time when the notion of going public is a little bit more uncertain in these markets,'' said analyst Danielle Turnof Fox at J.P. Morgan Securities. The planned initial public offering of barnesandnoble.com will be postponed, possibly for several months, while an amended registration statement is drawn up, a spokeswoman said. New York-based Barnes & Noble plans to sell as much as 20 percent of barnesandnoble.com in the offering. Last month, it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise as much as $100 million through the IPO -- cash that would help build up its World Wide Web business as rivals Amazon and Borders Group Inc. expand their Internet sites. BooksOnline Bertelsmann is starting its own online bookstore, BooksOnline, which will begin in November in several European markets. ''They have everything except a brand name, and Barnes & Noble is probably the biggest brand name in books,'' Fox said. ''The combination is going to be terrific.'' BooksOnline will work in collaboration with barnesandnoble.com, the company said today. Bertelsmann said in August it planned to invest several hundred million deutsche marks to ensure it grabs the lion's share of the business. It expects the Internet will account for 20 percent of book sales by 2010. Bertelsmann is the world's third-largest media company after Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. 18:32:10 10/06/1998

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (20381)	10/6/1998 8:31:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

"But there is room for everyone selling commodities on the internet!" Who cares about competition? Investors should. On-line brokers are harder to sign-up with (tranfer accounts into) than it is to change e-tailers. Price competition is as real for book-sellers or anyone else. In the very least, it will prevent the huge profits needed to justify Amazongonenutty's stock price. What seems incredulous is that well known stock brokerages somehow imagine that Amazon.com is immune to the same sort of on-line competitive pressures that they themselves are subjected to and fear.