IBM is the biggest Dot.Com of them all

Harvey Newstrom (newstrom@newstaffinc.com)
Sat, 4 Dec 1999 16:03:51 -0500

There is an interesting article coming out in the next edition of Business Week entitled, "IBM: The Biggest Dot.Com of Them All." It will be the cover story in the next edition of Business Week.

Apparently, somebody just noticed that IBM is making a lot more money on the Internet than the businesses usually considered to be Internet businesses, like Yahoo!, America Online, Amazon.com, eBay and E*Trade. Combining the top 25 Internet Businesses together barely reaches 150% of IBM's Internet revenue. IBM has a reputation as a dinosaur, but apparently they are far ahead in using the Internet when compared to "modern" businesses. When thinking of modern Internet-savvy companies, the common wisdom is to regard IBM as old-school and to look at the modern Dot.Com companies for Internet expertise. Apparently common wisdom is wrong again.

I have noticed that often news reports concerning the state of technology or business is just plain wrong. They tend to report common beliefs as if they were factual. A recent news article I read said that while most toy stores are touting Pokemon as the number one best seller, it isn't really. Hot Wheels cars are the biggest sellers, and other standard toys also top the list. Often, they hype heard in the media just doesn't match reality when compared to the facts.

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Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com>
<http://harveynewstrom.com>
Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.