• Robert Atkinson, and others
• Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

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28 May 2010This report was issued 25 years to the day in 1985 when symbolics.com was registered as the first .com in the world. The report quantifies the dazzling growth and economic benefits of e-commerce, especially in the last decade since bubble collapse, and recommends ways to ensure a growing and vibrant Internet in the years to come.

From its quiet beginning in 1985, the Internet has grown to 80 million .coms and well over 200 million websites. E-commerce is the driving force behind rapid innovations, new products, services and business models and redefining our roles as consumers and citizens.

Among the findings in the report are the following:

   * Of the roughly 250 million websites about 80 million are .coms. Even after the collapse of the .com bubble, the number of domain names grows by an average of 668,000 a month.
   * The .coms alone account for some $400 million in economic benefits to businesses and consumers and that figure will likely double in the next ten years.
   * Despite high-profile failures in the dot-com bubble burst, typical survival rates for these new businesses were actually higher than normal and spectacular success stories have followed.
   * Only about 25 percent of the world's 6.7 billion participate in the dot-com economy but is changing – 73 million Chinese became Internet users in 2007 alone.

In order to sustain the progress that has been made in empowering consumers, spurring innovations and boosting productivity, the report urges:

   * Adoption of policies that allow for the deployment of technologies, like wired and wireless broadband, mobile payments platforms, health IT, and other Internet platforms.
   * Removal of regulatory and legal barriers to the emergence of new e-business models.
   * Creation of incentives for companies to invest in Internet-enabled business practices.
   * Advancing digital literacy.

Authors: Robert D. Atkinson, Stephen Ezell, Scott M. Andes, Daniel Castro and Richard Bennett