Edward Thomas
Nahoru1. DOT COM, DOT GONE, DOT COME AGAIN
Can you re-arrange the paragraphs below to be in the right order? The article is about business on the internet.
A) The key driver for monetisation on the internet has been advertising - this is where Google made their money. But there are others. As already mentioned, Ebay and Paypal are examples. Ebay makes money by a small charge made for each transaction. Paypal similarly charges for connecting donors with receivers' of money. There are also companies like Amazon, with its book selling activities, which profit from selling either totally or partly online. Sales, from computers to second-hand books, are increasingly taking place online.
B) PayPal and Ebay are among a number of successful internet based corporations.
C) Nowadays PayPal is part of E-Bay. What is E-Bay? It's a kind of online auction (public sales) company where people can sell anything they want to the person who offers (bids) the most. But anyway, what is PayPal? It's an online payment system allowing people to set up an account which other people may pay into securely over the internet. It allows private individuals to receive payments from strangers for any kind of reason imaginable.
D) April 16th 2002 was an important day for a little company called PayPal. It was the day when it reported its first quarterly profit - of $1.2 million. By contrast, today PayPal estimates its profits in the billions.
E) The iTunes/Apple combination shows how today larger and larger companies are tending to dominate the internet, taking over smaller and innovative firms; this may or may not be a negative trend for the health of online business.
F) We can confidently say though that although the dot com bubble of the late 90's was a terrible example of bad investment, the basic ideas which drove those investments are clearly still very powerful, and as the internet technology has increased, so has the range and capabilities of online business.
G) Other companies have not yet properly monetized their activities, and haven't made profits. Youtube, for example, despite becoming the most significant online video provider, have continually made losses. On the other hand, Youtube's owners, Google, made billions of dollars in profit in 2008.
H) 2002 marked a point where the clever idea of the late 1990's had started to become a reality- actually earning actual cash. After the so -called dotcom bubble and crash of 1999-2000 some people wondered if the internet would ever make people real money
I) A good example is music sales. More and more songs are being downloaded for a charge onto such devices as ipods and Mp3 players. Companies like iTunes are now making profits from this growing business, although how much is hard to say because iTunes is owned by Apple, which means that their results are not separately published from the computer and phone giant.
Correct answers are here
Nahoru2. TERMS OF THE INTERNET TRADE
Some useful words from the world of e-business are explained below – but can you match the words with the explanations and fill in the gap left in each description?
