Chapter 12 - E-Commerce Overview

E-Commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services on the Internet. Whether business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or consumer-to-consumer, web sites that support e-commerce seem to be everywhere. This chapter provides an overview of this topic.

Recent Developments

December 2006 - Verisign has issued the first Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate to overstock.com. EV SSL is a new standardized validation process created by CA/Browser Forum, a voluntary organization of leading certification authorities and vendors of Internet browser software and other applications.

EV SSL Certificates maximize consumer confidence when visiting Web sites by providing another visual cue (in addition to the lock icon) that these sites are who they claim to be and that their online transactions are secured by encryption. Certificate Authorities perform much more stringent checks to than currently take place for SSL certificates. These checks include: verifing an applicant owns the domain, works for the organization, has authority to update the website, and that the organization is a valid, recognized place of business. Internet Explorer 7.0 will be updated in early 2007 to indicate when an EV SSL Certificate is in place.

Summer 2007 - Google has launched a new payment system called "Checkout" to compete with PayPal. Visit Search EngineWatch for an overview.

Chapter Updates

No errors have been reported for Chapter 12.

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