The development of e-commerce varies widely in different regions across the globe. Factors that impact e-commerce include the technological expertise of residents, which affects both the ability of e-commerce companies to find qualified workers and the ability of citizens to engage in Internet-related transactions; funding available for e-commerce ventures; and the technological infrastructure of …
In the early days, when the Internet was mainly a tool for government, military, and academic personnel, regulation was barely an issue, outside of the basic requirements for and restrictions on access. Once the World Wide Web came along and the Internet was opened to commercial activity, however, cyberspace became tied to the conflict-ridden world of national and international economic policies a…
With the world's disparate economies increasingly integrating into one global economy, and with the Internet affording more companies the ability to extend their reach overseas, the competitive pressures to establish a global presence—and the opportunities that abound therein—have taken on great importance. While a truly integrated and seamless economy was still a long way off…
Based in Delaware and founded in Zurich, Switzerland in 2000, the Global Trading Web Association was the world's first commercial, international organization devoted to the development of worldwide business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. The voluntary, non-profit organization was established by 23 major international corporations representing 15 nations, including India, Switzerland, Singapo…
Gomez Inc., formerly Gomez Advisors, was founded in 1997 by Julio Gomez, John Robb, and Alexander Stein. Just four years later, Gomez had secured the leading position among Internet research firms that served both consumers and e-business firms. The company evaluated over 6,000 e-commerce sites using its "Internet Scorecard," which ranked the performance and quality of World Wide Web…
Jerry Greenberg is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sapient Corp., a firm that provides Internet integration services to organizations like the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as businesses like iwon.com, Janus, Nabisco, Staples, United Airlines, and WalMart. Greenberg handles sales, marketing, and public relations for Sapient, while Stuart Moore, the firm's other co-founder and co-CEO, oversees the…
Greenlight.com was an online buying service for automobiles that launched in January 2000. The service was initially available in four Southern cities, then expanded to 31 states by mid-2000. The company was backed by a combination of venture capital firms, large automobile dealers, and Amazon.com. As the bear market took its toll on Internet stocks in 2000, the company laid off 25 percent of its …
Information has long been a cornerstone of business strategy. Firms need to know where they fit into the broader market, what the competitive openings are, what their customers' tastes and needs are, and how to manipulate all this information to their advantage. In the Information Age, particularly with the proliferation of the Internet, data moves at hyperspeed and is ever more critical as…
Andrew S. Grove is the chairman of Intel Corp. He served the firm as president from 1979 to 1987, when he replaced Gordon Moore as CEO. During Grove's eleven-year tenure at the helm of Intel, he orchestrated the firm's pivotal shift from memory chips to microprocessors and grew Intel into the world's leading microprocessor maker, as well as one of the most profitable manufactu…
During the late 1990s and into the new millennium, hacking became a popular term for the act of breaking in, tampering with, or maliciously destroying private information contained in computer networks. The FBI's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) reported 17,672 hacking incidents in 2000, a 79 percent increase over 1999 figures. …
The term hardware most often refers to computer machinery and equipment one can see and touch, such as central processing units (CPUs), disk drives, modems, memory chips, monitors, speakers, and printers. Memory and disk devices send data and instructions to the CPU. The type of hardware housed inside a computer determines how quickly the CPU can process these instructions. The software applicatio…
The Harvard Conference on Internet and Society is a high-profile event held every few years at Harvard University that brings together leading thinkers, policy-makers, technologists, businesses, and innovators involved with the Internet. At the conference, these individuals discuss and debate major topics relative to the development of the Internet, its impact on the economy and society, and its …
William R. Hewlett is the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), the second largest computer company in the world, behind IBM Corp. Along with partner David Packard, Hewlett was instrumental in growing the California-based firm from a small manufacturer of measurement instruments into a personal computer and printer powerhouse that reached $49 billion in sales in 2000. Lauded for their innovative…
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is second only to IBM Corp. among the world's largest computer firms. Along with manufacturing and marketing its top selling computers and printers, the firm also sells hardware, software, and services for World Wide Web-based operations. Under CEO Carly Fiorina, at the helm since July of 1999, HP has set it sights on becoming a premier e-business technology and ser…
Since its inception, university and college faculty have used the Internet as a powerful research tool and a vehicle for the dissemination of information. By the mid-1990s, many instructors communicated with students and colleagues via e-mail and incorporated Web-based materials into their courses. As the 21st century began, educators and administrators positioned the Internet as a central compone…
In its short history, the Internet has had a revolutionizing effect, not only on communications and computing, but also on broader areas of life such as economics, culture, language, and social relations. In that same time, however, the Internet and, subsequently, the World Wide Web have undergone a number of permutations, and the intentions of its developers have not always coincided with the way…
Home networking is the connection of several electronic devices, such as personal computers (PCs) and printers, to a single network, which is known as a home-area network (HAN). Although proponents of the technology claim future home networks will allow homeowners to link all sorts of appliances, like microwaves, stereos, and televisions, most of the HANs in existence in 2001 comprised desktop com…
Hoover's Online is a business information resource and portal that is operated by Hoover's Inc., a publicly traded company headquartered in Austin, Texas, with fiscal 2001 revenue of $30.8 million and more than 300 employees. A subsidiary, Hoover's Media Technologies, Inc., is a content aggregator and application services developer that was formed when Hoover's acquired…
Hypertext markup language (HTML) is an authoring or presentation language (not a programming language) used for creating pages on the World Wide Web. The language consists of special codes or tags that determine a page's visible appearance when read by a Web browser. In addition to defining the overall structure and layout of a Web page, HTML also is used to denote links to other Web pages,…
IBM Corp. is the world's leading maker of computer hardware—including mainframes, notebooks, personal computers, and servers—as well as the number one computer-related services provider. The firm is also second only to Microsoft Corp. in the computer software industry. While its position as a mainframe system powerhouse allowed it to experience stellar growth in the 1970s and …
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) oversees the distribution of Internet domain names, or site addresses, and other identifiers that distinguish one Internet site from another. The non-profit entity handles the assignment of IP addresses, which identify computers that are connected to a TCP/IP network; port numbers, which identify the type of port being used to ensure that…
An extremely hot phenomenon at the height of the dot-com craze in the late 1990s, incubators are the nurseries in which Internet startups can develop their business plans, products, services, and infrastructures, secured with plenty of financial capital, physical space, and on-hand expertise. In short, incubators are companies in business to support and bring to life new companies, particularly do…
Since the overwhelming majority of e-commerce transactions involve credit cards, the ability to accept credit cards as a form of payment was essential for e-commerce proprietors (also known as merchants) in the early 2000s. In order to obtain this capability, merchants had to apply for special merchant accounts with acquiring banks. After such an account was established, acquiring banks accepted f…
In order to understand the definition of an infomediary model, it is helpful to first understand the concept of a basic business model. …
Before the widespread adoption of computers, individuals were limited to some degree by the physical space needed to store paper-based information. With digital information, this is not the case, and the volumes of information to which users have access can be enormous. Furthermore, people have many different options when it comes to the ways in which they access information, ranging from closed p…