Word: welled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This is ground zero of the New Economy? At age five, Earth's Biggest Bookstore is now Earth's Biggest Selection, in keeping with Bezos' plan for world domination. Meaning what, exactly? Well, in a sense, Amazon isn't about technology or even commerce. Any moron can open an online store. The trick is showing millions of customers such a good time that they come back every few days for the next 50 years. Amazon is, like every other site on the Web, a content play...
...daunting task. For three years, defining Amazon was easy: it sold books. Then it sold books, music and videos. Now it sells toys, home-improvement products, consumer electronics and software as well. Then there are the equity stakes in start-ups like drugstore.com pets.com and Gear.com and struggling eBay-wannabe divisions: zShops and Auctions. Who are these guys now? What does Amazon represent? And will the company's more than 13 million customers stick around for power drills and wide-screen TVs? "No one's sure where all this is going," says Carrie Johnson, an analyst with Forrester Research...
...company has grown from one online store to more than a dozen, and from 1,100 to more than 5,000 love-it-or-leave-it, multitasking nomads. Ask the average Amazon employee for his or her business card. He will stammer and pat his pockets, explaining that, well, his number changed; she has a new job title; their group just moved; the new cards aren...
...Omidyar had lined up a venture-capital firm (Benchmark Capital, whose initial $6.5 million investment is now worth some $4 billion). eBay hired a marketing consultant to come up with the company's catchy, multicolored logo and confronted (and later defeated) threats from two new auction sites backed by well-funded big companies: Onsale and Auction Universe...
...speed bumps. The site has been plagued with headline-grabbing crashes, among them a 21-hr. outage in June, four more in July, and a 10-hr. shutdown in August that sent eBay stock plunging 10%. The stakes were higher than ever because the eBay staff was well aware that thousands of individuals outside the company--single mothers, disabled people, seniors--were supporting themselves by selling on eBay. "It was probably the single most stressful time we've had at eBay," says Skoll of the August crash. "Poor Meg would catch an hour's sleep on a cot and then...