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

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (52833)	4/26/1999 7:31:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

April 26, 1999 Amazon's Buying Spree Continues With a Trio of Web Acquisitions An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup Amazon.com Inc. unveiled another trio of acquisitions late Monday, parting with $645 million of its stock to expand its retail offerings while adding to its impressive arsenal of "back-end" systems for e-commerce. The online-retailing giant announced it has agreed to acquire Exchange.com, a Cambridge, Mass., collection of Web sites that let Web surfers search for hard-to-find, antiquarian, and used books at www.bibliofind.com and hard-to-find recordings and music memorabilia at www.musicfile.com. The company also announced it has agreed to acquire Accept.com, a Redwood City, Calif., e-commerce company whose goal is to simplify person-to-person and business-to-consumer transactions on the Internet, and Alexa Internet (www.alexa.com), a San Francisco company that has developed a free advertising-supported Web-navigation service that works with Web browsers to offer users suggestions about sites that are similar to the ones they visit. "This is a win for Amazon.com customers because it further increases our selection of rare and obscure items," Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive, said of the acquisition of Exchange.com, "and it's a win for the thousands of independent dealers on Bibliofind.com and MusicFile.com who will now be able to reach our eight million experienced online shoppers." Bibliofind.com maintains a database of more than nine million hard-to-find book listings, allowing dealers of rare books to upload their inventories and manage their businesses online. The site also offers forums about book-buying and matches want ads with newly available books, notifying potential buyers that sought-after books have been found. MusicFile.com offers similar features for music buyers and boasts more than three million items for sale by retailers, dealers, and private collectors. Amazon said the three substantially all-stock transactions are expected to close before June 30. Amazon has been on a truly impressive acquisition spree of late: The company grabbed stakes in online retailers Drugstore.com and Pets.com, and muscled its way into online-auction giant eBay Inc.'s turf last month by unveiling its own auction service and agreeing to buy LiveBid.com Inc., which lets Internet users watch telecasts of auction-house sales across the U.S. and bid on desired items. eBay, which had held preliminary talks with LiveBid, countered Monday with a $260 million deal to buy Butterfield & Butterfield Auctioneers Corp. for $260 million, bringing actual auction experts into its holdings and dramatically accelerating its ability to offer higher-priced items.