Back in the 1960s, as large mainframe computers began to have impacts on the lives of everyday consumers, the ability to shop online was still little more than a dream. But even then, corporations were already making use of Electronic Data Interchange to facilitate the sharing of invoices and other documents among themselves.
Sharing information became exponentially easier in the early 1980s, when the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) packet switching innovation prompted the creation of the modern Internet out of the limited architecture of the defense and research communities’ aging ARPANET.
Soon thereafter, the early consumer-focused CompuServe network opened its Electronic Mall specifically designed to promote online shopping. Although it made relatively little impact, the Electronic Mall serves as one of the first examples of an e-commerce platform.
The 1990s saw the wider expansion of e-commerce possibilities with the development of the hypertext-based World Wide Web, the Secure Sockets Layer security protocol that protects customers’ personal information, and the National Science Foundation-supported Mosaic, the first widely available free Internet browser. These and other technological innovations supported the growth of today’s giant e-commerce companies.