HIPLANESDRIFTER, you did it! You moved us into positive territory. Here's something else to consider beyond the banter, something more and more I'm going to try and stay away from. By the way, did you get through to Burgess?
You'll all like this! (from internet.com)
IBM Boss Sees $200 Billion in
E-Commerce By 2000
[March 20] IBM CEO Lou Gerstner said he thinks the market for
Internet commerce will hit $200 billion a year by the end of the century.
Gerstner, a keynote speaker at the CeBIT information technology fair
in Germany, said: "I believe that's a conservative forecast."
"It's not hyperbole to say that the 'network' is quickly emerging as the
largest, most dynamic, restless, sleepless marketplace of goods,
services and ideas the world has ever seen," Reuters quoted Gerstner
as saying.
He praised Internet companies like bookseller Amazon.com as
pioneers that are reshaping business practices, predicting huge
consequences for public policy.
And he urged governments to ensure that people have cheap access to
the Internet and warned against discriminatory taxes on electronic
commerce, saying that privacy should be protected by allowing
encryption of private and business documents.
Also at the trade show, Jozef Cornu, president and chief operating
officer at French telecommunications group Alcatel Alsthom, took the
wraps off new network technology that he said would enable Internet
access 100 times faster than today's networks.
"Internet business will increase exponentially, with 10% traffic growth
monthly and the number of users worldwide doubling each year," he
said.
Klaus Eierhoff, multimedia chief at Bertelsmann, Europe's biggest
media group, said German companies were more reluctant to embrace
Internet commerce, but that the times were changing.
"Electronic commerce is not the distant future for us, but already
reality," he said. "But we are at the beginning. We're at the place where
the U.S. was two or three years ago."
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, sharing the platform with Gerstner,
also sang the praises of the Internet as the engine for new jobs and a
vast global marketplace that never sleeps.
Kohl said Germany was rushing into the information age and that the
booming sector would create thousands of jobs.
Last modified: Friday, 20-Mar-1998 09:37:40 EST |
