Top 10 e-commerce developments of the decade

So if your not a suit

You don't use amazon, ebay, iTunes, google or Youtube then?

Amazon -- more prophet than profit

Amazon did indeed show the world what an online store should look like (and still does), so it's ironic that the company still has not achieved a cumulative profit after a decade of trading.

What about

I thought this was the biggest changes in eCommerce?

What has youTube to do with ecommerce? or am i missing something?

And what about online payments?

so what went wrong?

so only four of those have happened since 2000, of which YouTube and Broadband penetration are the only ones that you can consider recent. Does it just take 8 years for such things to become established enough to be considered influencial? or has everyone just stopped innovating and are content to make use of what's already available?

Oh Really?

What, no mention of micro-transactions?

I've been using the web for about 13 years now. In all that time I don't think I've ever responded to a banner advert or any other form of advert. Am I the only one who thinks that "Google AdWords" is just a way for the advertising industry to shuffle money around in a circle?

What's love (and other things) got to do with it

Khuram mostly beat me to it, but would somebody explain to me what impact have Google, Open Standards, Wi-Fi, and User-generated content had on eCommerce.

In what way have iTunes, and BlackBerry had sufficient impact on eCommerce to deserve a place in the top 10?

As Greg said

It's a list made by people in suits - whose company firewall probably blocks YouTube. And online payments are handled by Finance, so they wouldn't know about that either.

Weird...

What a weird list of e-comm companies (Amazon, eBay), enabling technologies (open standards, Wi-Fi, broadband) and, well, the Blackberry. What about micro-payments, price comparison engines, premium SMS, P2P payments?

and what about number 11

the iPhone

;-)

i'll get my coat

lol

This is a dreadful list...

...I mean, Blackberry? What on earth has that done for eCommerce?

Where are the truly revolutionary steps? Online adverts? Shopping baskets? Or any one of these (in no particular order): online payments, mailing lists, spam (well, it works!), comparator and aggregator sites; online banking; premium SMS; online share trading; WAP (well, okay, not WAP). You get the picture.

While I'll give them eBay and Amazon (although I would prefer that they actually mentioed the innovation), people were using search engines to find eCommerce retailers long before Google came along.

Broadband penetration? 50% in 4 years, but an astounding 40% in 3.5 years? Well excuse me if I'm not blown away by that stat!

I get the feeling OUT-LAW phoned this one through...

Before AdWords their was GoTo

Why does everyone forget about the fact that GoTo (changed name to Overture) was the first one to be the pay per click site?

Also, as the the other comments said, what the heck does this list have to do with eCommerce?

Paypal and Bittorrent (or various other p2p things), Messenger, Hotmail

...seem mysteriously absent, but are arguably two of the most fundamental factors in the digital economy these days. Paypal makes paying for stuff and receiving payments a little easier, and bittorrent makes not paying for stuff and giving away stuff for free a little easier.

No mention of instant messaging, which has fundamentally changed the way we communicate?

Nor Hotmail?

My top 5

Free music

Free films

Free software

Free information

Free dom

Payments

Surely the biggest part of e-commerce is the actual transaction. How on earth can you not have PayPal (or online payment handling/payment gateways) in the top 10 of the biggest changes to hit e-commerce?

This is a list of things which have partially affected our browsing habits and partially affected what we can browse, but very little to do with e-commerce. Are we sure these people have got the brief?

Google's surprising major achievement

Few readers realize that Google rests foursquare on a foundation of massive copyright infringement. By any measure, Google is the biggest infringer in history.

It is not surprising that Google has been repeatedly sued, and has had to either pay out money or buy out the victims suing Google.

A good example of Google's piracy is found in the image search mechanism. Google sends out "search and steal" bots to fetch back images. Google copies the images to its own discs (infringement); creates thumbnails (infringement by making unauthorized derivative works); causes the thumbnails to be copied to user computers (infringement); publicly displays the thumbnails (infringement). All of this without getting specific permission from the rights-owners, or even seeking permission in any way.

Yes, Google is a useful tool, especially for pirates. But for those of us expert in copyright law, or those of us who are creators and victimized by thieves, Google will always be thought of as strip-mining the internet, and a victory of thieves over creators.