Bertelsmann AG - Early History, Global Growth And Diversification, Focus On E-commerce

German publishing giant Bertelsmann AG is the world's third-largest media company, behind AOL Time Warner and Walt Disney. Book publishing operations include Random House, Bantam Books, Dell Publishing, Crown Publishing, Ballantine Publishing, Knopf Publishing, Doubleday, and Broadway Books. The firm's entertainment arm, known simply as BMG, oversees all Bertelsmann music, television, and radio holdings, including the RCA/Ariola and Arista record labels. Other non-book publishing segments include Bertelsmann Industrie, which handles printing for the company; magazine and newspaper publisher Gruner+Jahr; and Bertelsmann Book, which markets Bertelsmann's consumer book clubs. In June of 2000, Bertelsmann folded its growing group of e-commerce activities—including its wireless, cable, and broadband operations, as well as BarnesandNoble.com and BOL.com—into a new unit called Bertelsmann eCommerce Group. Its agreement later that year to join forces with music file swapping site Napster—part of Bertelsmann's plan to become the world's leading content provider on the Internet—garnered global attention.