After nearly seven years the BBC News Website closes its e-commerce index - so why has its time come and gone?

Do you remember the heady days of the first internet boom?



Investors poured billions of dollars into dotcom ventures with fragile business plans.

Software companies promised the digital nirvana was around the corner.

And the media were awash with stories of people who "got the web": the online retailers with their virtual shop assistants; the companies tendering for business online, even the monks that made a fortune selling cheese on the web.

It was the right time to launch an e-commerce section, because despite all the hype it was obvious that the internet was fundamentally changing the way we do business.

The e-commerce index was our opportunity to highlight and explain this trend.

Why the first e-commerce revolution failed

full story: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4964786.stm