E-Commerce Blog: The history and evolution of E-commerce

Electronic commerce (EC) is the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products, services, and/or information via computer networks, including the Internet. In the late 1970s electronic commerce was meant to facilitate of commercial transactions electronically using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) which helps to extend interbusiness transactions from financial institutions to other types of business and also provides transactions and information exchanges from suppliers to the end customers. Besides that, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) was also being introduces allowing organizations to transfer funds between one another electronically. Both EDI and EFT was introduced to allow businesses to send commercial documents such as purchase orders or invoices electronically. In the 1980s, the growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking are also a form of electronic commerce. From the 1990s onwards, electronic commerce includes enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing.

According to Schneider and Turban, with the progress of Internet technology and a highly developed global Internet community, a strong foundation of prosperous electronic commerce continues to be built. During the 1990s, the Internet was opened for commercial use; it was also the period that users started to participate in World Wide Web (WWW), and the phenomenon of rapid personal computer (PCs) usage growth. Due to the rapid expansion of the WWW network; e-commerce software; and the peer business competitions, large number of dot-coms and Internet Starts-ups appeared. Integrated with the commercialization of the Internet, Web invention, and PC networks these three important factors made electronic commerce possible and successful.

TIME LINES:

1990: The first web browser WorldWideWeb (www) was wrote by Tim Berners-Lee , using a NeXT computer.
1992: J.H. Snider and Terra Ziporyn published Future Shop: How New Technologies Will Change the Way We Shop and What We Buy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312063598.
1994: The Navigator browser with the code name Mozilla was released by Netscape in October. Pizza ordering was offered by pizzahut on its Web page. The first online bank opened. Attempts to offer flower delivery and magazine subscriptions online. Adult materials were also commercially available, as were cars and bikes. Netscape 1.0 in late 1994 introduced SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
1995:Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos and the first commercial-free 24 hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio started broadcasting. Dell and Cisco began to aggressively use Internet for commercial transactions. eBay was founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb.
1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
1999: business.com was sold for US $7.5 million, which was purchased in 1997 for US $150,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster was launched.
2000: The dot-com bust.
2003: Amazon.com had its first year with a full year of profit.