Word: like
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...founders ungodly wealthy. Some argue the world has entered a long boom, a kind of economic speed loop, where the centrifugal force spins off nothing but wealth and happiness. And launch parties. So up and off an elevator you go, melting into an unimaginably beautiful crowd. Every woman looks like a model; every man looks, well, Italian. This is an Internet party, right? What on earth could they be selling? A sign on the wall reminds you: this is the launch party for Beauty.com...
...areas of expansion. It's possible to argue that Bezos didn't master much more than an evolution of commerce, replacing old-fashioned stores with a centralized sales and shipping center. But even that one change, he notes, grabbing a favorite word, is "huge." For old-line businesses like K Mart, getting new customers meant building new stores at a cost of millions. For Bezos, serving new customers costs next to nothing...
...still losing his pants. That's maybe the one thing people still really don't understand about the e-commerce revolution. If these are such hot businesses, then why are they hemorrhaging cash? Amazon--the company everyone wants to be like--could lose nearly $350 million this year. O.K., the Net is different, but don't profits and losses matter anymore? They do. Bezos insists Amazon's oldest businesses--books, music and video--will be profitable...
...also a sign of the New Economics of Internet commerce. These new rules spring from the idea that in the new global marketplace whoever has the most information wins. While it used to be sellers who had all the information, buyers are getting smarter and smarter. At sites like mysimon.com it's possible to go shopping and search not only Amazon but also the collections of two dozen other booksellers to find the best deal. And in coming years--heck, at Net speed, in coming months--it will be possible to find the cheapest price on just about anything: wines...
Bezos is struggling mightily to make sure it doesn't kill Amazon too. Even as he cuts off competition like eBay by getting into the auction business himself (partnering with no less than Sotheby's), he is also trying to make Amazon a model of i-age shopping. When we buy one book, Amazon's computers can tell us what other people who bought that book purchased (and what they thought of those purchases). Or the site's users can look up the most popular books at their company or in their hometown. A few clicks from Amazon's home...