well as online archives.

For example, The New York Times site could be accessed free of charge, with articles of the print daily, breaking news updated every ten minutes, and original reporting only available online. The site of The Washington Post gave the daily news online, with a full database of articles, with images, sound and videos. The site of The Wall Street Journal was available with a paid subscription, with 100,000 subscribers in 1998.

In the United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online too, as well as the daily Le Monde and Libération in France, the daily El País in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.

"More than 3,600 newspapers now publish on the internet", Eric K. Meyer stated in an essay published in late 1997 on the website of AJR/NewsLink. "A full 43% of all online newspapers now are based outside the United States. A year ago, only 29% of online newspapers were located abroad. Rapid growth, primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil and Germany, has pushed the total number of non-U.S. online newspapers to 1,563. The number of U.S. newspapers online also has grown markedly, from 745 a year ago to 1,290 six months ago to 2,059 today. Outside the United States, the United Kingdom, with 294 online newspapers, and Canada, with 230, lead the way. In Canada, every province or territory now has at least one online newspaper. Ontario leads the way with 91, Alberta has 44, and British Columbia has 43. Elsewhere in North America, Mexico has 51 online newspapers, 23 newspapers are online in Central America and 36 are online in the Caribbean. Europe is the next most wired continent for newspapers, with 728 online newspaper sites. After the United Kingdom, Norway has the next most — 53 — and Germany has 43. Asia (led by India) has 223 online newspapers, South America (led by Bolivia) has 161 and Africa (led by South Africa) has 53. Australia and other islands have 64 online newspapers."

The online versions of newspapers brought a wealth of information. The web provided readers not only with news available online, but also with a whole encyclopedia to help understand them. The reader could click on hyperlinks to get maps, biographies, official texts, political and economic data, photographs, as well as the first attempts in audio and video coverage. The reader could also easily access other articles on the same topic, with search engines sorting out articles by date, author, title or subject.

1995 > AMAZON, A PIONEER IN CYBERCOMMERCE

[Summary] Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995 in Seattle, on the West Coast, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon's windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail. In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in United Kingdom (launched in August 1998), Germany (August 1998), France (August 2000), and Japan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002. A sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004. In July 2005, for its 10th anniversary, Amazon had 41 million clients and 9,000 employees.

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Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995 in Seattle, on the West Coast, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet.

The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books, i.e. the catalog of books available for sale in the U.S. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon’s windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail.

What exactly was the idea behind Amazon.com? In spring 1994, Jeff Bezos drew up a list of twenty products that could be sold online, ranging from clothing to gardening tools, and then researched the top five, which were CDs, videos, computer hardware, computer software and books.

As recalled by Jeff Bezos in 1997 in Amazon's press kit: "I used a whole bunch of criteria to evaluate the potential of each product, but among the main criteria was the size of the relative markets. Books, I found out, were an $82 billion market worldwide. The price point was another major criterion: I wanted a low-priced product. I reasoned that since this was the first purchase many people would make online, it had to be non-threatening in size. A third criterion was the range of choice: there were 3 million items in the book category and only a tenth of that in CDs, for example. This was important because the wider the choice, the more the organizing and selection capabilities of the computer could be put in good use."

In the wake of the Internet Bookstore in United Kingdom, that was the largest online bookstore in Europe, Amazon.com launched is own Associates Program in spring 1997. There were 30,000 associates in spring 1998, and 60,000 associates in June 1998.

As stated in a press release dated 8 June 1998 to promote the program: "The Amazon.com Associates Program allows website owners to easily participate in hassle-free electronic commerce by recommending books on their site and referring visitors to Amazon.com. In return, participants earn referral fees of up to 15 percent of the sales they generate. Amazon.com handles the secure online ordering, customer service, and shipping and sends weekly email sales reports. Enrollment in the program is free, and participants can be up and running the same day. Associates range from large and small businesses to nonprofits, authors, publishers, personal home pages, and more. The popularity of the program is reflected in the range of additions to the Associates Community in the past few months: Adobe, InfoBeat, Kemper Funds, PR Newswire, Travelocity, Virtual Vineyards, and Xoom."

People could search Amazon’s online catalog by author, title, subject, date or ISBN. The website offered excerpts from books, book reviews, customer reviews, and author interviews. People could "leaf" through extracts and reviews, order some books online, and pay with their credit card. Books arrived within a week at their doorstep. As an online retailer, Amazon could offer lower prices than local bookstores, a larger selection, and a wealth of product information. Customers could subscribe to a mailing list to get reviews of new books by their favorite authors, or new books in their favorite topics, with 44 topics to choose from. In 1998, Amazon was also selling CDs, DVDs, audio books and computer games, with 3 million clients in 160 countries.

Amazon’s main competitor was the online bookstore of Barnes & Noble, a major bookseller with 481 stores nationwide in 1997, in 48 states out of 50, as well as 520 B. Dalton stores in shopping malls. Barnes & Noble first launched its America OnLine (AOL) website in March 1997, as the exclusive bookseller for the 12 million AOL customers, before launching its own website barnesandnoble.com in May 1997 in partnership with Bertelsmann (Barnes & Noble bought Bertelsmann’s portion (36,8%) back for 164 million dollars in July 2003).

Barnes & Noble’s site offered significant discounts: 30% off all in- stock hardcovers, 20% off all in-stock paperbacks, 40% off select titles, and up to 90% off bargain books. Its Affiliate Network spread quickly, with 12,000