It took commercial interests a little while to see the value in the Internet, but they have now adopted wholeheartedly. In fact, the short-term commercial ventures on the Internet have probably been executed with too much gusto, money and attention. Small companies with virtually no product have been able to get incredible attention, overinflated stock prices, and very negative earnings. Certainly these options can be cost-effective. However, it is unclear how sites can effectively build up a userbase and sometimes tremendous amounts of money are spent trying to advertise a site, yet it never takes off.
Some businesses use the Internet to support their users via the web, e-mail and newsgroups.
Some businesses see the Internet as a cheap alternative to mail that can hit millions of targeted users. Generally, these individuals try to avoid posting to newsgroups or giving out their work addresses to web sites, since they don't want their professional site to get spammed with garbage. A huge number of North American business have placed web sites on the Internet - you can access these through search engines and portals. The government has been a major factor in the inception and growth of the Internet in its early stages. Now, the government simply makes up one of the many categories of users on the Internet.