A Brief History of E-Commerce

The history of e-commerce has continued up to the present day but is generally considered to also predate the period in which the Internet was available. Before personal computers had been introduced which could be used practically and relatively inexpensively by a wide range of consumers for Internet commerce, the history of e-commerce turned on technology which was used between different businesses which had the funds to use them, rather than between consumers and businesses.

The history of e-commerce includes the aspect of OS commerce, or open source commerce, as can be used freely by an array of people. In this regard, the late 1970s saw the development, prior to anything resembling Internet commerce, of methods for businesses to process their transactions with each other using electronic means.

Strictly speaking, a range of the technologically-driven innovations of the 1980s, such as ATMs, can also be considered as parts of the history of e-commerce, albeit one without the same access to computing on the part of consumers as was enjoyed by the large businesses serving them.

The modern phase of e-commerce was marked by a shift to a more open source, os commerce approach, as began with the 1990 creation of a web browser for searching the World Wide Web, though Internet commerce as such only became allowable in 1991. Moreover, OS commerce of this kind only became somewhat feasible with the Internet’s burst of popularity in 1994, and Internet commerce had become fairly widespread as a business model as of 2000.

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