So retailers that can build a network of reliable and loyal users might be in the game. As far as I'm concerned, the pure low-margin retailer that is simply going to compete on cost will have great difficulty. I think you're going to see a lot of the smaller on-line retailers come and go. What a lot of people have shown is that the complementary assets, when they are tightly held, can be a very powerful tool. Pure online companies must spend loads of money to build such complementary assets.
Internet companies seem to change their business plans rather frequently.
Online companies are less wedded to their original plans. Yahoo is an example of a company that has changed its value proposition quite a bit in terms of the specific products and services that it offers. And they're making money on things other than advertising, such as auctions. One of the cases deals with iVillage, the New York-based network of women's sites. The company recently announced it was getting out of its online retailing business, iBaby, about a year after acquiring it.