As e-commerce is a relatively new form of business there is not much history to it. The main business to business aspect started in the mid nineties when there was a merger between AOL and Time Warner which has further cemented the impact of the e-commerce industry on the entertainment and internet providing services. Since in America the main provider is AOL this merger was pivotal in making the industry well known as the two companies had relatively different focuses until they came together.
Another key moment in the history was the formation of napster. This program was very controversial and eventually was forced to be shut down but it helped to shed light upon the potential this industry had when given enough exposure. At the turn of the century there were major attacks on the some of the most dominant sites in the e-commerce industry such as yahoo, eBay and Amazon. These attacks brought to light the need of increased security online.
It is predicted that the revenues in e-commerce will grow from between 40 and 50 percent yearly until 2006. As is being seen now more traditional companies such as best and less, Wal-Mart and target are slowly integrating their business to consumer relationship into the e-commerce industry as it increases their customer base and they can use both forms of commerce to conduct their business. It is also predicted that these trends will be followed and there will be substantial growth in the business to consumer form of e-commerce in years to come. There are variations of the business to consumer form of e-commerce such as, consumer to consumer where the consumers sell directly to each other through auction sites, there is also peer to peer where the consumers download a program and they sell to each directly or they can be for free.
The meaning of the term "electronic commerce" has changed over time. Originally, "electronic commerce" meant the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, usually using technology like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI, introduced in the late 1970s) to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically.
Later it came to include activities more precisely termed "Web commerce" -- the purchase of goods and services over the World Wide Web via secure servers (note HTTPS, a special server protocol which encrypts confidential ordering data for customer protection) with e-shopping carts and with electronic pay services, like credit card payment authorizations.
When the Web first became well-known among the general public in 1994, many journalists and pundits forecast that e-commerce would soon become a major economic sector. However, it took about four years for security protocols (like HTTPS) to become sufficiently developed and widely deployed (during the browser wars of this period). Subsequently, between 1998 and 2000, a substantial number of businesses in the United States and Western Europe developed rudimentary Web sites.
Although a large number of "pure e-commerce" companies disappeared during the dot-com collapse in 2000 and 2001, many "brick-and-mortar" retailers recognized that such companies had identified valuable niche markets and began to add e-commerce capabilities to their Web sites. For example, after the collapse of online grocer Webvan, two traditional supermarket chains, Albertsons and Safeway, both started e-commerce subsidiaries through which consumers could order groceries online.
As of 2005, e-commerce has become well-established in major cities across much of North America, Western Europe, and certain East Asian countries like South Korea. However, e-commerce is still emerging slowly in some industrialized countries, and is practically nonexistent in many Third World countries.
Electronic commerce has unlimited potential for both developed and developing nations, offering lucrative profits in a highly unregulated environment.
