In 1997, the BBC asked Jeff Bezos when internet shopping would take off

Earlier this year, Amazon reported $143.3 billion in revenue for the archetypal 4th of 2024. But 27 years ago, the BBC wondered erstwhile predictions that the net revolutionizing buying would travel true, speaking to section bakers, booksellers, and adjacent Jeff Bezos to find out.

The Money Programme report, which primitively aired successful November of 1997, was precocious added to the BBC Archive YouTube Channel. In it, newsman Nils Blythe takes a simulated travel connected the accusation superhighway — implicit with wonderfully dated ‘90s-era bluish surface effects and graphics — and speaks to retailers who had varying levels of occurrence with online commerce astatine the time.

Those included a tiny bakery successful the UK that was enjoying respective thousands of dollars successful income each twelvemonth selling its baked goods internationally, and the British supermarket concatenation Sainsbury’s that was having middling occurrence selling groceries utilizing the internet, phones, and adjacent faxes.

Blythe besides spoke with Jeff Bezos who had launched Amazon.com arsenic an online publication retailer conscionable 2 years prior. Bezos bragged that Amazon’s catalog of implicit 2.5 cardinal books was 10 times much than the largest brick-and-mortar publication stores were capable to stock, and predicted that “over immoderate ample fig of years... net publication selling is going to go a precise ample business.” He was mostly correct, 4 years earlier Amazon turned a nett for the archetypal time.