1995

E-Commerce

Buyer behavior is a finicky thing, no matter what service or product the merchant may be offering. Conducting commerce online presents its own set of challenges—practical, technical, and social—that until 1995 were simply not solved well enough to ignite virtual buying and selling on a massive scale. That changed in 1995, however, when a number of seminal events finally made e-commerce “click” for consumers and truly launched the era of online commerce.

The first important ingredient was security. In 1994, Netscape unveiled Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), which let consumers send their credit card numbers over the internet without fear of having them stolen along the way; in April 1995, Verisign® opened for business, selling digital certificates for certifying the authenticity and credibility of online businesses. At the same time, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which had altered the NSFNET acceptable use policy in March 1991 to allow commercial traffic, was now slowly transferring its role as steward of the internet’s infrastructure to commercial operators. In 1995, the NSF authorized Network Solutions, Inc. (which had a five-year agreement with NSF) to start charging a domain name registration fee as the volume of commercial requests skyrocketed. These events, along with websites that were quickly becoming more professional, with visual sophistication and technical functions that enabled direct engagement with customers, set the stage for e-commerce.

In 1995, Pierre Omidyar (b. 1967) started eBay, then called AuctionWeb, to establish a mechanism for everyday people to sell their stuff to one another. He knew he was onto something when his first sale—$14.83 for his own broken laser pointer—was purchased by someone who collected—you guessed it—broken laser pointers. Amazon launched this year as well, as did DoubleClick®, an early advertising network (now owned by Google). But what actually was the first secure, online transaction? That is up for debate, but among the colorful contenders is Pizza Hut®, which began selling pizza online in August 1994.

Today, many people choose to do their shopping primarily from their laptops or phones.