"Anybody who has a modicum of Internet capability and wants to take what is now a modest amount of time can very rapidly find out and comparison shop . . . . There is almost perfect information out there." (Leo F. Mullin, Delta Air Lines CEO, quoted in The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2001, in a page one article about growing resistance among business travelers to high undiscounted airfares.)

"The once-booming business-to-business sector has been especially hard hit, in large part because companies haven't been able to deliver on the elaborate promises made for the technology at the height of the Internet bubble. B-to-B products are designed to allow companies to use the Internet to run their business." (The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2001, commenting on big losses at Ariba and Commerce One. )
Ariba Losses
Commerce One Losses
SAP Profits
Another one bites the dust: Metalsite Closes

Online Trust . . .

John Jordan, director of electronic-commerce research at the Center for Business Innovation, a Cambridge, MA, research unit of Cap Gemini Eernst & Young:

"There's a category of people, defined partially by generation, who expect that some relationships will be electronically mediated. They've found ways to meet, assess and trust people they don't "know" in the conventional sense of the word. As more of these people enter the work force and the economy, online transactions will be their expectation, but it won't be a transition that we'll be able to document very precisely." (Quoted in The Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2001.)

Click here for more on "online trust."

"Cap Gemini found that only 27 per cent of [European] tier-one suppliers -- together employing 500,000 workers and boasting $43 billion in annual sales -- had even heard of Covisint . . . . "

- Reported in the Financial Times, May 7, 2001. "A survey of almost 60 tier-one component and engineering groups shows that nearly two-thirds of the industry's largest suppliers have no strategy for using internet-based procurement systems or exchanges."

Read a review of Jupiter Research's "Getting Procurement Agents to Buy Online."

View e-commerce strategy of the Big Three Automakers on their Covisint website.

View wholesale parts e-commerce strategy of the Big Three Automakers on their OEConnection website. OEConnection is a new venture owned and supported by DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Bell & Howell.

Ariba Losses -- Ariba CEO Larry Mueller abruptly resigned and the company reported a $274 million loss for the quarter ended June 30. (Ariba reported losses for the earlier period - see archived report.) (07/20/2001)

Commerce One Losses -- Commerce One reported a $2.06 billion loss for the quarter ended June 30. (07/20/2001)

SAP Profits -- German ERP ("Enterprise Resource Planning") software giant SAP reported net income of $179 million for the quarter ended June 30. Notably, SAP injected $222 million into Commerce One (see above) in recent months, increasing its ownership in that company to 20% from 5%. (See archived report about recent SAP effort to serve "private exchanges" together with Commerce One.) (07/20/2001)

Another one bites the dust: Metalsite Closes - Pittsburgh-based Metalsite.com, a website for steel trading, suspended their marketplace operations June 6 and is attempting to restructure. Metalsite was one of the first dot-coms to gain venture capital ($200 million from Internet Capital Group; NYSE : ICG). Metalsite.com also owns Scrapsite.com. (6/7/01)

Quote of the Day archives for E-Commerce-related quotes.