Ex. 4.2. Read and translate the following text:

EVOLUTION OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

The business phenomenon that we now call electronic commerce has had an interesting history. From humble beginnings in the mid-1990s, electronic commerce grew rapidly until 2000, when a major downturn occurred. The popular media published endless news stories describing how the “dot-com boom” had turned into the “dot-com bust.” Between 2000 and 2003, many industry observers were writing obituaries for electronic commerce. Just as the unreasonable expectations for immediate success had fueled unwarranted high expectations during the boom years, overly gloomy news reports colored perceptions during this time. Beginning in 2003, electronic commerce began to show signs of a profound rebirth. Companies that had survived the downturn were not only seeing growth in sales again, but many of them were showing profits for the first time. As the economy grew, electronic commerce grew also, but at a faster pace than the overall economy. Thus, electronic commerce gradually became a larger part of the total economy. In the general economic recession that started in 2008, electronic commerce suffered far less than most of the economy. From 2003 through the present, as the general economy has expanded and contracted, electronic commerce has consistently expanded more in the good times and contracted less in the bad times than other economic sectors. Categorizing electronic commerce by the types of entities participating in the transactions or business processes is a useful and commonly accepted way to define online business. The four general electronic commerce categories are business-to-consumer (or B2C), business-to-business (or B2B), consumer-to-consumer (or C2C), and business-to-government (or B2G). Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business To many people, the term “electronic commerce” means shopping on the part of the Internet called the World Wide Web (the Web). However, electronic commerce (or e-commerce) also includes many other activities, such as businesses trading with other businesses and internal processes that companies use to support their buying, selling, hiring, planning, and other activities. Some people use the term electronic business (or e-business) when they are talking about electronic commerce in this broader sense. For example, IBM defines electronic business as “the transformation of key business processes through the use of Internet technologies.” Most people use the terms “electronic commerce” and “electronic business” interchangeably. In this book, the term electronic commerce (or e-commerce) is used in its broadest sense and includes all business activities that use Internet technologies. Internet technologies include the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other technologies such as wireless transmissions on mobile telephone networks. Companies that operate only online are sometimes called dot-com or pure dot-com businesses to distinguish them from companies that operate in physical locations (solely or together with online operations); however, online business activity has become so integrated with everyday life in much of the world that few people worry about these distinctions any longer.

(From: Gary P. Schneider (2015) Electronic Commerce. (11th ed.). Cengage Learning. P.5-6)