T raditionally, disintermediation has been defined as a development that enables households to bypass banks and place their savings directly with other types of financial institutions. In the context of the Web, it has come to signify the disappearance of a wide variety of “middlemen,” or intermediaries, and the creation of an enhanced sales network in which customers deal directly with service providers. The result is supposed to be a “frictionless capitalism” that reduces both inefficiencies and costs. The first studies on e-commerce provided contradictory predictions about the impact it would have on intermediaries. Some suggested that the Internet would kill them off, while others concluded that their role would become more important than ever. Evans and Wurster (1997) pointed to a critical aspect of the e-business revolution: that the possibility of dissociating the physical flow of products and related information offers a wealth of new opportunities for reshuffling and reconfiguring the relationships among all the participants in the value chain-suppliers, distributors, retailers, customers. We contend that predictions of the imminent demise of intermediaries are premature, reflecting both a failure to analyze the variety and importance of intermediary functions and, more important, the lack of an overall strategic view assessing the costs of services intermediaries provide in the context of their perceived value to clients and customers. Understanding the impact of e-commerce on intermediaries requires an analysis of how the tasks and functions of traditional economic actors are being reformulated and rebuilt. Electronic retailing, or e-tailing, has been a frontier for the development of e-commerce. By examining traditional functions provided by intermediaries in sales transactions, we intend to demonstrate that current Internet trends go beyond disintermediation. Emerging new Internet players are being joined by entirely new types of intermediaries, leading to the radical restructuring of industrial and commercial networks.