Online 'shopping bots' flood Web sites seeking PlayStation2

Bots can log on to as many as seven sites at a time, every 30 seconds, looking for an item going on sale. The customer gets an e-mail when the bot finds the item.

They have been around for years, and are great for shoppers, but they are less than popular with e-tailers watching their sites slow under the flood of hits.

"It's a very real problem, and I think we're liable to have legal forays into this particular issue down the line," said Jack Staff, chief internet analyst for Zona Research Inc. in Redwood City. "Especially if a site's performance degrades and sales are not enough to compensate."

Sony promised 1 million consoles would be available this year when the PS2 was launched late in October. But the company quickly slashed that estimate in half as shortages of chips limited the number of the $300 machines the company could produce.

PS2s are trickling into the country now, but demand is outstripping supply and sometimes the only way to find one is through the use of the bots.

Bluelight.com, Kmart's San Francisco-based online site, had a major bot attack on Dec. 1, when it recorded 80,000 hits from PS2 hunters in just a few minutes.

"We suffered a slight slowdown in the site based on that traffic, but we were able to readjust and haven't had any slowdowns since," said Communications Director Dave Karraker. "It's very interesting to us that people are so desperate for this product. Thousands of hits -- it's almost like an attack.

"Our goal is to provide as many people as possible the ability to shop with us on the Internet," Karraker added. "If shopping bots cause people to have a less than satisfactory experience, then we're against them."

"At some levels, shopping bots are useful to direct traffic to some sites and let consumers know who has what product at what price," said Peter Christy at Jupiter Research in Los Altos.

"But big Web sites are already under a lot of pressure during the holidays and the last thing they want to see is any diminishing of their ability to deal with their customers."

However, Christy said, larger, more sophisticated sites can simply screen bot contacts, avoiding the flood of hits that might otherwise slow them down.<