Wired For The Bottom Line

Amazon.com and its model has quickly become a standard--and competition is everywhere, from catalog-based sellers as well as B&M retailers. But conventional wisdom has it that in any given retail category, there's going to be only two or three big-time winners in cyberspace. Rather than go head to head with a giant, competitors must specialize, and even then it's a struggle. "On the Internet," says Chris MacAskill, CEO of Fatbrain.com, which focuses on technical books, "you're across the street [from your competition], whether you like it not."

Bezos thinks that the entire economy will benefit from ripple effects of e-commerce. In the not terribly distant future, we'll have vans circling the suburbs with hardcover best sellers, CDs and grocery items. Within hours of logging your order on a Web site, the van drops off the loot. Or maybe the order will be logged from a palmtop computer or a cell phone.

The direct-selling model is still evolving, but it's the bedrock of e-commerce. "It all has to do with the balance of power shifting away from companies and toward consumers," says Bezos.