Walmart.Com Vs. Amazon: This Race Isn't Even Close

Conventional wisdom is a funny thing. This time last year, Amazon.com Inc. was king of the world. The company was worth more than $40 billion, CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos was Time's Man of the Year, and thousands of you--you, because I can't buy tech stocks--were getting rich going along on Jeff's ride. This year, to some, Amazon looks more like the Titanic than the most famous line in the movie about it. Its market cap has slid to a lowly $9.4 billion. And to hear some pundits tell it, the big boys are coming to get Jeff and kill his company dead, the biggest bully of all being Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Trouble is, the case for Amazon getting crushed by Wal-Mart doesn't stand up when you do some side-by-side comparing of their Web sites. What's wrong with Walmart.com? Put simply, it settles for taking orders for the products people come looking for rather than enticing them to buy things they hadn't even thought of buying. Amazon is much more ambitious. Once you've visited the site, it knows who you are when you come back and suggests items based on what you bought before. Customers can make a purchase with one click of the mouse. The site's easy to use--and fun to boot.