The history and evolution of E-Commerce

The word E-Commerce or electronic commerce was founded late in the 1970’s. The term was introduced for transactions done via computer to computer.

There have been several key steps in the history and evolution of E-Commerce. To interchange data and to carry out business deals electronically in 1960’s Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was formulated. Initially ecommerce was facilitating business transactions electronically using technology such as EDI (electronic data interchange) and EFT (electronic funds transfer) to send business documents such as purchase orders or invoices. However, in 1984 the ASC X12 standard became stable and reliable in transferring large amounts of transactions. In 1969 ARPANET, was developed by Americas department of defence for researching new reliable networks and later this enhanced into Internet that was purely used as a research tool for nearly 20yrs.

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee developed World Wide Web at CERN that started the first Internet transaction. These technology supported exchange of data that was in text format only. The next major step occurred in 1993, Mosiac was developed by Marc Andreessen, this is the first graphic web browser. The Mosaic browser was quickly adapted into a downloadable browser. Netscape, the most successful graphic browser was later developed by Marc Andreessen. On the other hand, Microsoft came up with Microsoft Internet Explorer. The first business deal took place in 1994 and since then there have been billions of dealings.

Later in 1998 DSL was launched into the market that provided much faster access and persistent connection to the internet. A major merger, in early 2000, between AOL and Time Warner was another major push for electronic commerce. The merger, worth $350 million, brought together a major online company with a traditional company. In February 2000 hackers attacked some major players of E-Commerce, including Yahoo, eBay and Amazon. In light of these attacks the need for improved security in the development of electronic commerce

As the websites grew the importance of internet today is thousands of times what it was only a decade ago. E-Commerce is a new form of business that has developed rapidly. It provides a different mode of doing business that helps reduce labour cost and much faster transaction