BASIS TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH AND MINORITY INVESTMENT FROM AMAZON.COM

— Rick Dalzell, Amazon.com CIO, Joins Basis Technology Board of Directors —

Cambridge, MA, and Seattle, WA, February 18, 2000—Basis Technology (www.basistech.com), the leading provider of internationalization technology for Internet companies and Web software developers, announced today it has received a minority investment from Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the leading online retailer.

“Basis Technology’s dedicated development team and pioneering technology ensure a great shopping experience for our customers as we expand into local markets around the globe,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO.

“This investment and alliance signifies the importance of rapidly growing overseas markets to the future of e-commerce,” said Carl Hoffman, Founder and CEO of Basis Technology. “In less than two years, it is likely that more than half the Internet will speak a language other than English. By choosing us as their globalization partner, Amazon.com is demonstrating its commitment to reaching all consumers, regardless of language, culture, or geography.”

As a result of the investment, Rick Dalzell, Amazon.com’s Chief Information Officer, will serve on the Basis Technology Board of Directors. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Basis Technology has established its leadership position by providing internationalization services and technology to companies including Amazon.com, Brio, Critical Path, Harte-Hanks Data Technologies, InterTrust, Lucent Technologies, Lycos, Mail.com, and PeopleSoft.

About Amazon.com
Amazon.com (Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries) is the Internet’s No. 1 music, No. 1 DVD and video, and No. 1 book retailer. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection, along with online auctions and free electronic greeting cards. Amazon.com lists more than 18 million unique items in categories including books, CDs, toys, electronics, videos, DVDs, home improvement products, software, and video games. Through Amazon.com zShops, any business or individual can sell virtually anything to Amazon.com’s more than 17 million customers, and with Amazon.com Payments, any seller can accept credit card transactions, avoiding the hassles of offline payments. The company also participates in sothebys.amazon.com, the leading auction site for guaranteed art, jewelry, and collectibles, at www.sothebys.amazon.com.

Amazon.com seeks to be the world’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they may want to buy online. Amazon.com’s All Product Search scours the Web to help customers find merchandise that is not available at Amazon.com, Amazon.com Auctions, or Amazon.com zShops, making Amazon.com the shopping destination to find anything.

Amazon.com operates two international websites: www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.de. It also operates the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), the Web’s comprehensive and authoritative source of information on more than 150,000 movies and entertainment programs and 500,000 cast and crew members dating from the birth of film in 1892 to the present.

This announcement contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, Amazon.com’s limited operating history, anticipated losses, unpredictability of future revenues, potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results, seasonality, consumer trends, competition, risk of distribution center expansion, risks related to fourth quarter performance, risks of system interruption, management of potential growth, risks related to auction and zShops services, risks related to fraud and Amazon.com Payments, and risks of new business areas, international expansion, business combinations, and strategic alliances. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998 and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 1999, June 30, 1999, and September 30, 1999.

About Basis Technology
Basis Technology is the leading provider of internationalization technology and services to software publishers, Internet companies, and global enterprises. The company specializes in software re-engineering services for Unicode compliance, and offers a wide range of cross-platform software components that deliver off-the-shelf solutions to problems commonly encountered in internationalization projects.

The company’s flagship product, Rosette, is the leading cross-platform library for Unicode, the rapidly emerging international standard for software that handles multiple languages. More than twenty top-tier Web software publishers, search engines, and portals have adopted Rosette as the core of their globalization strategy. Basis Technology is the only Web internationalization company that is also a full member of the Unicode Consortium.

Basis Technology’ s staff of multilingual project managers, software engineers, testers, and translators are veterans of more than one hundred software and Web internationalization projects. The company works closely with its customers to maximize the opportunities offered by rapidly expanding global markets.

Company headquarters are located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a branch office in Tokyo, Japan. For more information, visit www.basistech.com or call 617-252-5636.