Those Internet predictions of 1999 weren’t so far off the mark…

I read an interesting article today in the Investors Business Daily about the maturing of the Internet. Unfortunately, the article is not accessible via the web, but here are the salient quotes:

“The Internet is no differnet from any other industry; it needed time to mature before it could start producing profits, says Perry Boyle, co-head of research for investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners.

“‘What’s changed are the business models and the valuations,’ said Sue Decker, CFO of Yahoo. ‘It was just a matter of time to get the business models working.’

“In 1999, analysts forecast B2B commerce to reach $1.3 trillion in annual sales by 2002. The market is now at $2.4 trillion.

“Analysts may have been overly optimistic about consumer e-commerce [but not by that much!]. Four years ago, they expected online sales of goods to consumers to reach $108 billion by 2002. The amount was closer to £90 billion.

“‘The ubiquity of the Internet is playing out, The ‘crazy’ predictions of the Internet in 1999 have played out pretty close to reality.'”