Back in 2000 online purchasing and e-commerce were still in their infancy. It was difficult to predict back then whether traditional models of commerce applied

Back in 2000 online purchasing and e-commerce were still in their infancy. It was difficult to predict back then whether traditional models of commerce applied to these businesses, and to what degree consumers would adopt online buying. We know much more now about online business, growth (long and short-term), scaling, value of users (and their cost of acquisition), logistics, all sorts of relevant business benchmarks/analytics, etc. Enough at least that many are concerned about Groupon in a more justifiable context than Amazon circa 2000.