The history and evolution of E-Commerce

Do you guys still remember that we lined up for at least half an hour, to buy the stupid movie ticket in previous time? It’s irritating, isn’t it? But nowadays, internet has changed the way that we buy and sell goods or services. Most of us make business transactions online on such a regular basis such as online-booking for the movie ticket and airline ticket as well. Therefore, this activity or action of buying or selling of goods and services over the internet is called “E-Commerce”.

So, how did E-Commerce get started? Well, let me explain to all of you here. In 1960s, those companies and businesses were using ancient computer networks to carry out the electronic transactions. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) had been introduced to help the companies for interfacing and trading without human conduct such as sharing business documents invoices, order forms and shipping confirmation with another company's computer.

Until 1979, the American National Standards Institutes (ANSI) had come out with ASC X12, which is a universal standard for sharing business documents over the electronic networks. It is adopted to standardize the EDI to assist the businesses would be able to complete the electronic transactions with one another reliably. After 15 years, the Mosaic web-browser or Netscape was made, people had their first time to buy things off their computer. Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser, and for Netscape, it is allowed easier access to e-commerce.

In 1998, people came out with Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable connections, which provide fast, always-on Internet service to subscribers. It allows a computer to stay connected all the time and prompts people to spend more time, and money to online. Thus, E-commerce becomes more popular. The largest bookstore, Amazon.com and the electronic paying field which is eBay are the two companies that transformed e-commerce in 1990s.













Unfortunately, at the turn of the twenty first century, the dot-com bust happened and many of these businesses went broke because of many people still didn’t have high speed Internet in their homes and many small businesses were lacking of funds to create the web sites. However, it does not stop people from using e-commerce.

In 2000s, those booming trading online, travelling with tickets purchased at discounts over the Internet have lead to e-commerce accounting for 1/3 of the total economic growth of its. Today, those average persons have the high speed Internet connection that lets them move easily between web pages. This makes it easy to do comparison-shopping online. More importantly, it has increased the ability of people to work from home to set up e-commerce sites also.


In conclusion, E-Commerce is still one of the leading forces of economic growth today. People are now familiar to buying tickets over the Internet and shopping for gifts. It can bring a lot of benefits to users, suppliers and customers such as saving time and costs. It may also have some technological limitations or nontechnological limitations such as security and privacy, lack of trust and etc. But, with the Internet still in its infancy, the future of e-commerce has the ability to change and again revolutionize the way people think about shopping

Tuesday, June 10, 2008