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E-biz strikes again
April 2004
As the Internet boom turned into bust, corporate
America could be forgiven for allowing itself a
small sigh of relief. When all was giddy, and
the stock market giddiest of all, big companies
feared the disruptive power of the Net. Look
what happened to Barnes & Noble (BKS ), they
fretted, as Amazon.com (AMZN ) changed the game
of bookselling. Or how Expedia Inc. (IACI )
overran travel agents. No one wanted to be the
next to get "Amazoned." So when the NASDAQ
buckled in 2000, the corporate giants relaxed --
relieved that things weren't going to change as
radically or as rapidly as they had feared.
Uh-oh -- the threat is back. Net companies have
survived their nuclear winter, and throughout
the economy, big companies are again under
assault. Again, the Web is threatening to force
down the prices charged by traditional players,
squeeze their margins, and even put some out of
business.
New technology, new ways of doing business, and
new approaches to cutting out the middleman mean
the old pricing power is collapsing in a series
of industries -- and existing leaders will be
forced to find new ways to make money. The
pressing question is: How many more industries
will be transformed by the Net? "How high is the
sky?" answers Barry Diller, CEO of
InterActiveCorp, which owns Expedia and other
Net properties.
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