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THE INTERNET bandwagon that was scheduled to arrive three years ago is finally due to pull in. Apologies for the delay, partly caused by an unfortunate crash in 2000.
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And don't be surprised if you don't recognise the bandwagon, because it will bear little resemblance to the shiny and exciting machine we once expected.
The touted $15bn (£10bn) flotation of search engine Google is a sign the internet is rolling again.
Followers of the stock market will have already spotted as much - America's hitech Nasdaq stock market has risen by 40% in the past year. Online bazaar eBay is worth $35bn - 50% more than General Motors - while shares in British-based lastminute.com are finally worth more, in real terms, than they were when the company's float marked the last gasp of dotcom mania in 2000.
Why should the internet revolution succeed now, when it did not before? It failed to change our lives, transform productivity or bring us little more than porn, paedophilia and promises of penis enlargement. But change has come from growth.
'There are a lot of what appear to be small changes,' said sPaul Parker, e-commerce general manager for industrial products distributor RS Components. 'But collectively they are altering the competitive landscape.'
The internet has a distinct set of abilities, and different combinations produce varying confections. Pornography works because it exploits the internet's ability to display pictures, to hold lots of data, to allow people to search for them, to deliver them cheaply, to change them regularly and to take payment by credit card.
Stirring the ingredients another way, we find a different success story. RS Components grew mighty on its paper-based catalogue, selling electrical bits and pieces. But since it set up a website in 1998, the driver has been ecommerce. RS works so well online because it exploits the web's dataholding ability, its searchability and its payment systems - just as pornography does.
EBay lets people sell anything from carpets to crocodiles to each other, and it uses the web's strengths to the full. It is also creating a new breed of consumers who have learned to play commerce with skill.
Web-based betting company Betfair allows its members to place and lay bets - in other words, to act as bookies. It is becoming a significant force in the sector, to the chagrin of the big bookmakers.
Cheapflights.co.uk was set up in 1996 by a journalist who realised that he could act as a gateway to the hundreds of other travel sites on the web, making the site attractive to advertisers.
CD Wow sells low-cost CDs, turns over £100m and is profitable. Agent Provocateur, a London-based chain that pioneered the classy lingerie market, now gets 20% of its £12m turnover from its website.
'We thought hard how we could reproduce the experience people would get in our shops on the site,' said co-founder Serena Rees. The result is a sumptuous video-laden site to tempt visitors who might never visit its physical shops.
Perhaps the most intriguing areas are those where the potential is clear but the revenue is not.
UKvillages.co.uk includes a section for every community in Britain with information about schools, amenities, pubs and so on. Revenue comes from advertising, market research and exploiting the content.
If this sounds vague, remember two things. First, the internet is so complex it is dangerous to second-guess what will work. Second, when Google started, no one could see how it would make its money. 'We can bide our time,' said UKvillages co-founder Ellie Stoneley.
David Bowen is a website effectiveness consultant for Bowen Craggs & Co (www.bowencraggs.com)
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