The Internet and World Wide Web are revolutionizing conventional business models and in some cases producing new ones.  For instance, before the World Wide Web, most people did not participate in auctions. With the advent of eBay and other online auction sites, however, people are auctioning off everything from computer games to gardening tools used tennis shoes. Another groundbreaking innovator is Priceline.com, which has enjoyed enormous success with a model that lets the customer name their price for a certain item. Recently some of these innovative Web-based businesses have succumbed to the economics of profit, but their innovations are being adapted by the survivors.

To figure out just how fast the Internet economy is growing, the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce at the University of Texas at Austin conducted a study of over 2000 Internet companies. It found explosive growth from $322 billion in 1998 to $524 billion in 1999, a 68 percent increase. The fastest growing sector was e-commerce, which skyrocketed by 72 percent from $99.8 billion to $171.5 billion. According to researchers’ estimates, over 50,000 companies make some or all of their money online. This year over a trillion dollars in revenue will be generated through the Internet.

E-business has become standard operating procedure for the vast majority of companies. Setting up and running an e-business, especially one that processes a large number of transactions, requires technical, marketing and advertising expertise. Customers want access to products and services on a 24-by-7 basis, and the easiest way to provide that is to move operations online. The businesses that provide the most reliable, most functional, most user-friendly and fastest services will be the ones that succeed.

Banks are moving all of their operations online, as it becomes clear that the Web, unconstrained by geographic boundaries, is a more efficient vehicle for their services and allows them to work on a truly global scale. Real-time trading in foreign markets has been made possible, as has instantaneous currency conversion. Soon, global data on financial activity will be available online in real time and global transactions through the Internet will become the norm.

People are currently able to pay their bills, write and cash checks, trade stocks, take out loans, mortgage their homes and manage their assets online. Money as we know it may cease to exist, replaced by more convenient technologies such as smart cards and digital cash. Intelligent programs will take care of the financial and logistical aspects of the interactions between both the individuals and the corporations who populate the Internet. All that a person will need to go shopping is a connection, a computer, and a digital form of payment.

Traditional “brick and mortar” stores are already being replaced by a multitude of electronic storefronts populating the World Wide Web. No single brick-and-mortar store can offer 50,000 products, but an online store has the capability to offer a limitless number of them. Services exist that will comparison shop for a consumer, finding the best deal on items from cooking equipment to cars. An increasing amount of consumer information is being made available, leading to better deals for customers. For instance, Web sites that post car invoice prices have made it possible for auto buyers to circumvent the sticker price. Internet shopping is already beginning to eclipse more traditional modes, according to research done during the Christmas season of 1999, which found higher satisfaction rates for shopping online than it did for shopping at a brick-and-mortar store or through a catalog.

In addition to business-to-consumer operations such as electronic stores, business-to­business marketplaces, and services are also taking their place on the Internet. A business which orders products from a supplier online not only completes the transaction with greater speed and convenience, but also can keep track of the shipment constantly. Business-to-business e-commerce Web sites are also channels that permit close cooperation between different business as well as the outsourcing services that are and will continue to be so crucial to the Internet economy.

The transition from brick-and-mortar businesses to “clicks” businesses is happening in all sectors of the economy. It is now possible for a business to work without an office, because the employees can conduct all communication via phone, voice mail, fax, e-mail and the emerging capabilities of the Internet. There are already Internet services that integrate phone, fax, voice and e-mail, and in the future, new technologies will further facilitate the virtual office. Some businesses have already divested themselves of all their brick-and-mortar locations and gone completely online. Despite the shift online, the brick-and-mortar segments of many businesses will not become obsolete. They will still have their uses and purposes, but in order to work effectively, they must be integrated with their online counterparts, as the Internet economy requires integration to facilitate the transfer of information.

Many e-businesses can personalize the user’s experience, tailoring Web pages to their individual preferences and letting them bypass irrelevant content. This is done by tracking the consumer’s movement through the Internet and combining that data with information provided by the consumer, which could include billing information, interests and hobbies, among other things. Personalization is making it easier and more pleasant for many people to surf the Internet and find what they want.

Hand in hand with the promise of personalization, however, comes the problem of privacy invasion. What if the e-business to whom you give your personal data sells or gives that data to another organization without your knowledge? What if you do not want your movements on the Internet to be tracked by unknown parties? What if an unauthorized party gains access to your private data, such as credit card numbers? These are some of the many questions that must be addressed by consumers, e-businesses and lawmakers alike.

Personalization is just the tip of the privacy iceberg, as there are many other ways that privacy can be compromised on the Internet. However, there are many organizations and companies which crusade for privacy and provide privacy software. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), an encryption program written in 1991, was so strong that the U.S. government could not crack it.

The unprecedented information-transfer capabilities, unregulated nature, and breakneck growth of the Internet have fostered rampant copyright infringement and piracy of intellectual property. Innovative new technologies such as MP3 have been used in an illicit manner to transfer music over the Internet -- touching off litigation by the recording industry against companies whose technologies can be used to facilitate the transfer of illegal copies of recordings. Electronic piracy of books and printed material is also common, yet it does not concern the publishing industry as much, as sales of paper books have not yet been noticeably affected. The demand for the security of intellectual property is helping drive the development of new technologies including digital signatures, digital certificates and digitalsteganography. These technologies, which are constantly advancing to higher degrees of security, are becoming standard for online transactions and communications.