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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (27575)	11/21/1998 4:45:00 PM
From: OtherChap	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

I hate to be in the company of amazon longs, and never more so than after I read this quote on the yahoo message boards about AMZN.. Now here is sound investment advice if i've ever heard it! ************ Don't get caught up with earnings, cash flow, etc. Look at the growth in stock price, the stock splits, and support the small investors are now starting to give to this stock.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (27575)	11/21/1998 7:23:00 PM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

<Your point is well taken. Yhe "newbies" coming online will likely go to Barnes and Noble first. Barnes and Nobles is doing an excellent job of gaining alliances and the best "real estate" online. > Glenn, I must agree that Barnes and Noble is doing a lot of things right - their purchase of Ingram was simply brilliant. They beat Bezos to the punch, so to speak. They are a classic example of a company that has achieved dominance in their field by developing a brilliant business model and executing it beautifully. As competitors they are not for the faint of heart. They are certainly giving Amazon a run for its money. Glenn, a book that revolutionized my thinking re: technology investing was The Gorilla Game by Geoffrey Moore, published 1998. If you have not yet read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Anyway, he calls those companies that dominate their market niches gorillas - Microsoft in PC operating systems, Cisco in networking, Intel in chips, etc. He talks about how such domination gives these companies all sorts of competitive advantages that ultimately are reflected in growing but relatively stable stock price. Such companies are the "blue chips" of the technology sector, so to speak. They grow faster that the Dow blue chips, but do not experience the stock price swings that a non-Gorilla company such as Ascend might face. At any rate, as gorillas grow up, they can begin to invade the established turf of another gorilla - the Java war between Microsoft and Sun, or Microsoft adding networking capabilities to NT as an invasion of Cisco's turf. I see the battles shaping up re Amazon vs. Walmart, and Amazon vs. Barnes and Noble, as being battles between gorillas as they invade each other's established turfs. The Internet space sets the stage for a tremendous number of gorilla battles because the Internet is in the process of revolutionizing virtually every aspect of the world's economic order. Gorillas must invade each other's turf if they are going to survive in this new world order. It is for this reason that we see the stocks of companies so far successful in this space (AOL, YHOO, and AMZN, for example) to be performing as well as they are performing. Interestingly, Moore does not believe that any Internet companies can attain true gorilla status - for the very reasons that many on this thread are bearish re: Amazon's long-term prospects. There is no way for a company to maintain a dominant competitive advantage long term. Netscape in browsers, Real Networks (perhaps?) in streaming technology, EBay (perhaps? in online auctions, or Amazon (perhaps?) in books/online retailing or however you what to characterize its evolving focus. <Just a few months abo AMZN had a far superior site. Not anymore so that first onlinbe advantage manybe over hyped. I can't say I know for certain. > Again you make Moore's point. <PS Please tell me what you think of the BKS site after you try it and what you think of their delivery, etc.> Will do my best. Rob