Amazon.com may yet turn a profit one of these years. But as each year passes colored with great gobs of red ink, it looks like a better bet that this company instead will go down in business history as a classic case study of great expectations gone awry. This despite the fact that amazon.com has achieved much of what it set out to do. It has branded itself into a household word in a remarkably short time. It sells a tremendous amount of merchandise to an astounding number of customers at attractive prices and great convenience.
So why can't this quintessential dot-com company make any money doing what it does so well?