|
Looking_forward____Looking_back
| Looking forward . . . Looking back
Looking forward . . . Looking back
Our company is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year – a
long time by Internet standards. This prompted me to take a look
at what has been happening with the Internet in the last decade.
Remember when Web pages were grey with black text? Remember when
the best Web editor was notepad? Take a trip down memory lane .
. .
1993 First graphics-based Web browser - NCSA Mosaic -
introduced. Traffic on the Internet expands by 341,634% annual
growth. 1994 Netscape Communications Corp founded. Yahoo founded
by 2 PhD students from Stanford. "Spamming" begins - unsolicited
bulk emails. Standard agreed for 28.8K modems. 1995 Netscape
launches on the stockmarket - share value rises to $3 billion on
first day. AltaVista search engine is launched by DEC (remember
them?). Java programming language launched by Sun Microsystems.
Registration of Domain Names no longer free. 1996 Age of the
Internet has arrived. 40 million people connected. More than $1
billion spent at Internet shopping malls. Internet telephony
starts. Promises a major reduction in call costs (which proved
unfounded). 1997 World-wide Web Consortium publishes HTML
Version 4 including multi-media features and support for
different languages.
1998 Over 100 million Internet users. Network Solutions
registers its 2 millionth domain. World-wide Web Consortium
releases specification for XML. Technologies of the year -
eCommerce, eAuctions, portals. 1999 First full-service bank
available only on the Internet (First Internet Bank of Indiana).
Technologies of the year - eTrade, online banking, MP3. 2000
Technologies of the year - ASP, Napster. The dot com "bubble"
became the dot com "bomb". Reality bites back. 2001 Broadband
gaining popularity. 72% of Americans use the Internet. Half of
Europeans now online. Number of active Internet subscribers rose
by 11.5% during the year. English losing its dominance on the
web. 43% native English speakers, 32% native speakers of
European languages and 24.7% Asian languages. 2002 Over 600
million Internet users world-wide. Over 111 million new Internet
users this year. US consumers spend $2.2 billion on online
purchases in a single week in December. Online sales double in
the UK this year.
In the late 1990's, venture capitalists were pouring money into
the market with new start-ups promising to transform the
business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B)
marketplaces.
The massive inflow of capital led to irrational expenditure on
poorly constructed business plans. An over-investment in
bandwidth, particularly fibre-optic cabling, and in the new 3rd
Generation (3G) mobile networks, led to a crisis in the
telecommunications industry with sharply reduced valuations and
the spectacular collapse of Global Crossing.
After the dot com “bubble” burst in 2000, contrary to popular
perception, the Internet continued to expand rapidly. The
penetration of broadband has started and is enriching the
Internet experience for many people. It is still only the
beginning. B2C and B2B business plans are now better
constructed. The emphasis for B2C is marketing and customer
relationships. The emphasis for B2B is to harness low cost
communications and the business integration opportunities of
Intranets and Extranets. And yes, the cost of bandwidth will
continue to plummet. But, we may need to wait another year
before Tablet PCs and 3G networks become significant.
Here’s to the next 10 Internet years!
|
|
| |
| |
