Jan 29

The Future of the Internet
Sun Review Jan. 29, 2000

No one can dispute the incredible growth of the Internet. According to conservative estimates from sources such as IDC (www.idcresearch.com), there are over 200 million users worldwide. IDC forecasts that in 2000, the U.S. Internet user population will reach the 50% threshold of 137 million. With the advent of competitively priced high speed Internet access for home users (such as cable and ADSL), more Canadians will be getting online too.

So where is the Internet headed? Not only into your home, but also into your business. Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is becoming extremely important, and is expected to increasingly dominate through 2003. Despite all the hype about portals and electronic retailers, B2B ".coms" are leading the latest round of hot Internet initial public offerings (IPOs).

You can expect to see free Internet access deals over the next year from major e-merchants such as brokers, banks, retailers and travel companies. In an effort to attract more customers, some of these merchants will offer free Internet access (and even free PCs!) if you use their services. K-Mart recently struck a deal with Yahoo! offering free Internet access to those who register at Bluelight.com. None of this free access will truly be free, of course. Someone has to pay the ISPs, PCs, and Internet appliance companies. The same goes for software, which may also be "free" in 2000, bundled into an online product or service.

The highly competitive market of e-retailing will experience more mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures. This consolidation trend is expected to continue in 2000, especially in the largest consumer online commerce category of travel, where smaller and struggling travel websites are forced to compete with giants such as Expedia.com and Travelocity.com. You may have already noticed that search engines like WebCrawler and Excite have merged. Search engines are also placing greater emphasis on shopping by partnering with existing shopping sites or launching their own virtual malls. The latest craze appears to be comparison shopping sites such as Shopper.com that use "shop-bots" to scour the Web for the best prices.