Yet all it takes is one visit to our site's news page to recognize the utility in saving daily visits to each of your favorite Web sites. The Internet will likely continue its development in the same path as television. When it started, just about anyone could get on. Many of these giants will learn that building it themselves isn't nearly as easy as buying these cash-strapped online businesses outright. Charles Schwab and American Airlines stand as case studies of innovative use of corporate databases as a back end to Web front ends.
Health care is next in the queue.
The new year will be the year the health care industry actually makes significant progress in addressing patients' needs for information, access to health care, and more user-friendly ways of dealing with health care behemoths like HMOs. Given how much we spend on health care and products, and how much the market is driven by information, it's only a question of when. Y2K will actually be a blessing in disguise as medical centers and pharmaceutical companies overhaul old disparate legacy systems. As they install new hardware and software, forward-thinking organizations will do with an eye to the Internet. Finally, we can rest assured that some company we've not yet heard of will make a huge splash somewhere.