How the internet has changed our lives

Google , This website is so succesful it became a verb. Search engine Google is not only one of the most visited sites it is the market leader in a fiercely competitive sector. Google's enormous coverage and speed of results has meant that the concept of search has expanded from looking for websites and reference material to hunting for personal details ('googling' old and new friends)., The Google brand is expanding - buying web publishing tool Blogger and launching a news service - but is likely to face renewed competition in 2004., Ebay , What Google did with information, Ebay did with things. With more and more people using the online auction pretty much anything you'd ever need can be found on here. Ebay is now the largest e-commerce site in Europe., Microsoft Outlook , No aspect of the internet has changed the way we work more than email. It has enabled 24-hour business to become a reality and has revolutionised communication within companies too. Unfortunately MS Outlook is the preferred carrier for spam and viruses too though. , AOL Instant Messenger , Instant messaging is seen as the web's latest killer aplication - again improving communication in the workplace. AOL was the pioneer in this sector although MSN Messenger is far more popular in Europe. , All the major portals are looking to make money out of instant messaging. With AOL unable to communicate with MSN some consolidation is likely., Napster , Only time will tell if Napter's newest incarnation as a paid download service is a success, but its status as the original file sharing network guarantees it a place in online history. Napster blazed a trail that Audiogalaxy and today's market leader Kazaa followed. All the biggest file sharing networks have been dogged by legal issues but their impact on users is just as important as their impact on record companies., Napster helped popularise the MP3 format and led indirectly the current success of portable MP3 jukeboxes like the iPod., Amazon , Despite some wild predictions, books are much the same now as they were 5 years ago. But Amazon earns a place on this list for the way it sells them., Amazon and other successful e-commerce ventures like Lastminute.com have pioneered personalised selling and sell hundreds of thousands of items through customised newsletters and recommendations scheme., This kind of 'Social Software' is likely to become more sophisticated, so interactivity will be an even bigger selling point., Friends Reunited , If there's one site that has changed the perception of the internet in the UK it's Friends Reunited. The internet was suddenly no longer a geek's playground - normal people used it too, including those you went to school with. , The hugely successful formula has been used in most other countries too and is said to have paved the way for the wider acceptance of online dating., easyJet , Back in the days of the dot.com boom, e-commerce was talked up as an agent of revoluntionary change in every business. But only in the travel sector did things really change. easyJet's web only business model and radical pricing structure led to a host of imitators and genuinely shook up the airline and holiday industry. easyJet is still the number one online budget airline and the budget sector has prospered during a generally tough time for airlines, Kelkoo , Shopping comparison portal Kelkoo is one of the biggest European e-commerce success stories, helping millions of Europeans research and compare prices on a vast range of products and services at the best prices. Kelkoo is a great example of a service site that makes the rest of internet easier to use., Blogger , Blogger is a tool that lets you publish your own 'blog' or web diary. The Blogger company was bought by Google recently, a sure sign that blogging is moving further aground. The significance of blogging is the way it allows communication on every level - politicians reach out to their public through blogs and the public share pictures and stories with their friends., Source: Nielsen/Net ratings