Internet Globalization

How does the Internet and the associated World Wide Web affect international business activity and the globalization of the world economy?

Since the beginning of the internet in the 1990’s, there has been tremendous growth and expansion of globalization on the world’s economy. In 1990 there were less than a million people on the internet, fast-forward to 2010 and that number was over 1.97 billion users. At present, there are roughly 3.5 billion global internet users. Today, virtually everyone has some form of access to a computer or the internet. This access has broken down barriers of restriction for small business owners who were previously unable to sell their products outside their local area. The world wide web and the internet has given them the power to be active in the international selling arena, thus allowing them to instantly become an international business. The internet breaks down time zone restrictions as well. The world wide web allows customers to access stores anywhere at any time. As development of the internet continues, safer and faster purchasing methods of transactions online are being built. Paypal is a transaction site that has become an international name that consumers use to do national and international purchasing.

Studies show that business-to-consumer e-commerce sales in 2011 increased to 961 billion dollars, an increase of nearly twenty percent from the previous year. The United States is currently the single biggest e-commerce market followed by the United Kingdom and Japan. Growth rates for the previously mentioned countries will average between 10-15 percent annually. China’s e-commerce sales growth, on the other hand, in 2011 grew more than 130 percent. It is predicted that China may become the world leader in e-commerce relatively soon.

By the end of 2013, global e-commerce sales estimates could be over 1.25 trillion dollars. There are also fast growing developments from other European countries such as...