Aug 24, 2001, 11:25am

As a followup to the last rant, some more serious bad vibes a floatin' around. You heard the term here first, folks: I think we're facing the first ever "Internet Depression". As a student of history, one topic I know a fair amount about is the 1930s depression, what brought it about and what solved it. The sad fact is, US Government involvement solved it. And World War II. Yes, it took that long.

Today, I'm reading my news online, and I get this story about Egghead going tits up and read about Buy.com doing so bad, they're losing their credit card processor.

I remember not so long ago when Buy.com was one of the Net's rock solid evendors. One of the benchmarks, the weathervanes of the Net.

And Egghead. Sigh. I don't like the company much... One of my first online purchases was through OnSale, an auction company. I bought a walkman through them back in 1998. OnSale used to be pretty good... till Egghead bought them. Then they sucked.

Egghead, for those who don't know, used to be a bricks and motar store - they even had a couple of locations in Vancouver. Sometime around '98 they radically changed their business plan and shuttered all the bricks, and went to a clicks only motif. Seemed smart - the Net was booming. My one and only purchase from the online Egghead was a Krups Aroma Pro Digital coffee machine. Problem is, it wasn't the digital model I received. Egghead mislabled and misrepresented the item listed on their site. It took about 2 weeks to get the product (too long), and about 2 months to derive any satisfaction from them for their mistake. After receiving a credit to my CC, I opted not to shop there any more. They spammed me quite a bit. I emailed several times to ask it to stop. It didn't.

Then they bought OnSale for something like $50mil (not sure on the number). And drove OnSale into the ground.

And today, it looks like they're selling their user list, something they say in their privacy statement that they will never sell or rent for any reason, to Fry's, a muchly hated Californian high tech store. They're selling their user list because, well, that's pretty much the only thing of value they still own. Fry's doesn't want the Egghead name. And all that is being handed over is $10 million. I wonder how many millions were flushed down THAT drain...

Yep, an Internet Depression for sure. Don't even get me started on Excite@home.

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Mixelania

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Time Mag Article
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NY Times
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Washington Monthly
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Canon 5D
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Alzo Digital Lights
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Canon Xsi dSLR
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Canon 40D
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