Online Rules of Successful Companies: The Fool-Proof Guide to Building Profits, The

Foreword

It is hardly original to observe that the popular view of the Internet has changed radically in its short lifetime. In the space of well under a decade, those perceptions have progressed from playground for geeks and scientists to curiosity to phenomenon to burst bubble. Yet to dismiss the importance of the Internet to companies today because of the failure of so many ill-conceived business plans is to miss the online medium's real and continuing impact.

Many transforming technologies have gone through the same evolution that the Net has—so many, in fact, that it seems a massive shakeout is not just characteristic but is almost a requirement somewhere along the way. The automobile, for one, followed much the same pattern in its early life; ...