Hi reg7:
Thanks for the interesting question.
The short answer to your question is "the shareholders in Amazon.com
own the IMDb."
In 1998, Amazon.com purchased the database from its original owners
who were the people that worked on it. Some sites that detail the
purchase:
IMDb History
URL: http://www.imdb.com/Help/Oweek/history
Quote: "Of course, amazon.com wasn't coming in as a white knight,
throwing money at the IMDb in an altruistic gesture. Amazon had a plan
to expand into selling video tapes and DVD's, and they saw the IMDb as
a resource. There was an amazing amount of raw data in our files,
great expertise and talent in our staff/shareholders, and millions of
potential customers in our visitor traffic. A deal was struck for the
IMDb to be purchased and become an amazon.com company, finally giving
the people who had worked so hard on the database a real return on all
the time they had invested."
INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE
URL: http://www.seacoastsearch.com/feature21.htm
Quote: "In 1998 IMDb.com was purchased by the most successful Internet
company, Amazon.com. The history of the process, as published on the
company’s web site, makes it clear that Amazon, unlike the IMDb
founders, was motivated more by dollar signs than by the love of film
trivia. IMDb had the content. Amazon had the videos and the DVDs for
sale, the delivery system, and the customer base. Now with a simple
mouse click, readers can BUY all the videos featuring Ernest Borgnine
too. It seems like the perfect match."
In fact, if you go to the bottom of most any page on IMDb, you'll find
the Amazon.com logo.
Of course, millions of people own stock in Amazon.com, so it would be
impossible to list them all (besides, the complete shareholder list is
not available). However, the following pages list some of the major
individual and institutional owners.
Insider Trades
URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/t/in/a/amzn.html
Top Institutional and Mutual Fund Owners
URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/hd/a/amzn.html
I hope that this information has been of help in your search.
If you need any clarification of the information I have provided,
please ask using the Clarification feature and provide me with
additional details as to what you are looking for. As well, please
allow me to provide you with clarification(s) *before* you rate this
answer.
Thank you.
websearcher-ga
Search Strategy (on Google):
imdb
"Col needham" "jeff bezos"
imdb amazon
imdb amazon purchased |
