Amazon.com

If you have not already done so, you should read today's NY Times article A Retail Revolution Turns 10 (free registration required).

THE image in Mark R. Anderson's head was that of an airplane struggling to gain altitude. Mr. Anderson, one of the technology world's more highly regarded pundits, watched a speck of a company called Amazon.com grow from a three-person start-up in a converted garage into a publicly traded corporation that came to symbolize both the best and the worst of the dot-com era.

Mr. Anderson publishes The Strategic News Service, an influential newsletter read by the likes of Bill Gates and Michael Dell, and prides himself on being able to predict the future. But he acknowledged that he had been dubious of Amazon and its charismatic chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, and for a time had believed Amazon was more likely to crash than to attain cruising altitude.

Ten years ago this week, Amazon.com made its Internet premiere when Mr. Bezos opened a Web site he audaciously called "Earth's Biggest Bookstore." Amazon sold only a half-million dollars' worth of books in the first six months, but was soon posting the kind of gaudy growth rates that impress Wall Street: sales hit $15.7 million in 1996 and $147.8 million in 1997.

During its entire life Amazon has frustrated the analysts and hedge funds alike. Many believed it would have gone out of business by now. Yet, it has defied the cynics and become a strong Internet company. Many investors remain, however, frustrated by Bezos's obsessive fixation on the customer and insufficient attention to the financial statements. Amazon is a fascinating story that is still being written.