With awe-inspiring consistency, it appears that Amazon.com, usually touted as the most successful internet business venture, is still losing money. Amazon is a wonderful idea, and, at least in its web presence, it radiates confidence and success. Apparently, however, in order to successfully sell books via the web it's not enough to save money through almost completely eliminating warehousing costs and other forms of overhead. They also have to sell books at under-cost. And even in the virtual world, even if you sell millions of books, if you sell them at a loss, you're not going to make a profit.

But don't worry, despite the rather unconvincing success of Amazon (or perhaps that should be the convincing unsuccess?) deals in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are still being cut between companies who intend to reap in the riches from a still somewhere off in the future internet paradise. I read these stories with a studiousness beyond my true interest in the matter. Since I consider myself a part of that amorphous "internet community" I figure that no part of it should be foreign to me. But the truth is that not only don't I care, but that I've been on the losing side of these deals for a long time already.

And the reason that I've been on the losing side is because I still cling to an outmoded approach to what the internet is supposed to be. I still see it as a source of unlimited public information.

Go to: Only a pawn in their game