The Internet Economy 25 Years After .Com: Transforming Commerce & Life

Citation
Robert D. Atkinson, Stephen J. Ezell, Scott M. Andes, Daniel D. Castro & Richard Bennett, The Internet Economy 25 Years After .Com: Transforming Commerce & Life (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) (Mar. 2010) (full-text).

Overview
The report was issued 25 years to the day in 1985 when symbolics.com was registered as the first .com in the world. The report quantified the dazzling growth and economic benefits of e-commerce, especially in the last decade since the .com bubble collapsed, and recommended ways to ensure a growing and vibrant Internet in the years to come.

Among the findings in the report are the following:


 * Of the roughly 250 million websites about 80 million are .coms. Even after the collapse of the .dom bubble, the number of domain names grows by an average of 668,000 a month.
 * The .coms alone account for some $400 million in economic benefits to businesses and that figure will likely double in the next ten years.
 * Despite high-profile failures in the dot-com bubble burst, typical survival rates for these new businesses were actually higher than normal and spectacular success stories have followed.
 * Only about 25 percent of the world's 6.7 billion participate in the dot-com economy but that is changing – 73 million Chinese became Internet users in 2007 alone.

To sustain the progress that has been made in empowering consumers, spurring innovations and boosting productivity, the report urges:


 * Adoption of policies that allow for the deployment of technologies, like wired and wireless broadband, mobile payments platforms, health IT, and other Internet platforms.
 * Removal of regulatory and legal barriers to the emergence of new e-business models.
 * Creation of incentives for companies to invest in Internet-enabled business practices.
 * Advancing digital literacy.