One billion users will drive the Internet by 2005  
 
With fifteen percent of the world's population online, e-commerce will boom to $5tn.  
 
The Global Market Forecast for Internet Usage and Commerce claims that fifteen percent of the global population will be online in four year (a seventy percent compound annual growth rate in Internet spending from $354bn in the year 2000).  
 
And, Europe is likely to take pole position.  
 
source: ZDNet UK

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said on Wednesday 23rd May 2001 that the bursting of the dot-com bubble is not the end of the technology boom, only "the end of the beginning".  
 
Gates told a meeting at Microsoft's CEO Summit "The next decade is the big one. This is the decade when your involvement with computing will be pervasive".  
 
source: ZDNet UK