ALWAYS-ON NETWORKS: In Why eBay Works, eBay CEO Meg Whitman explains the company's success in terms of making inefficient markets efficient.

NETWORLD: Yahoo! is buying Overture for $1.6 billion. Overture was a pioneer in the pay for position search engine market. I highly recommend Overture for anyone wanting to drive traffic to their site. I recommend Google Adwords even more. In measuring inbound traffic using landing pages, Google was the clear winner over all other pay for position search engines. It doesn't hurt to use all of the major ones, though. The smaller players are somewhat less competitive and more cost effective.

NEW YORK TIMES: I've mentioned the FTC scrutiny of state laws concerning online, interstate wine sales. A whopping 26 out of 50 states don't allow it. Virginia Postrel describes the investigation in more depth.

Why Consumers Aren't Getting the Full Benefit of E-commerce

The legislation against online wine sales is caused primarily by lobbying from rich and powerful liquor distributors. This is a group that isn't entirely divorced from tactics that are both strong-armed and legally questionable (see Al Capone). Don't expect fair play.

On the other hand, even fully above-board, white collar industries such as software and IT aren't above practicing non-competitive tactics when it comes to e-commerce. An almost weekly headache in my job as an e-commerce manager is dealing with problems created by conflicts between the web sales channel and the traditional sales channel (the guys with cell phones and fax machines).

Here's how it starts. Some firm gets a quote for a technology product (a router or firewall, for instance) from their local supplier. Firm practices due diligence and checks the web, where they find lower prices. Asks supplier to match the web prices, or at least come down a little. Supplier balks, loses the sale, and calls the manufacturer to complain about the evil e-commerce company who is underbidding them by taking smaller margins (which benefits the consumer and, ultimately, the manufacturer).

Result: The manufacturer complains to the evil e-commerce company for having the gall to take advantage of this new-fangled Internet thing to drive sales and sell more efficiently. (Never mind that the manufacturer's product wouldn't exist without the Internet.) Manufacturer tells the e-commerce outfit to raise their prices, or to remove their prices from the web, or to conform to minimum advertised pricing (MAP). All of which could get the manufacturer in hot water with the FTC for anti-competitive price-fixing. (Now who's evil?)

What's even sillier is that sometimes the client never did buy from an e-commerce outfit. They just plain didn't buy. Sometimes it seems that the complaints are loudest when everyone is in a slump, including us. The guys with the fax machines just assume the guys with the e-commerce sites are getting all the business. The manufacturers - instead of admitting that sales are in the basement - let the e-commerce guys be the scapegoats.

This is an ongoing battle between the past and the future. It's difficult at times, but the future always wins. And make no mistake about it: e-commerce is the future. You want to be the guy with the e-commerce site, not the guy with the fax machine.