In retrospect, the entire year looks like a dress rehearsal for an online Christmas. During the holiday season a year ago Americans spent around $1 billion shopping on the Net; the final tally for '98 is expected to be two to three times that figure. Whether it's books, computers, plane tickets, or -- see the next item -- stocks, consumers blithely clicked past formerly imposing worries about credit card fraud and personal privacy. (Businesses, meanwhile, seized on the Internet's obvious efficiencies, with companies such as Dell and Cisco processing billions of dollars' worth of equipment orders through the Net.)

Ground zero for the public's cyber shopping spree was Amazon.com, the digital retailer supreme, which -- savor the contradiction -- built its early lead delivering the very old media known as books. For all of Amazon's shopkeeping expertise, though, yet a new challenger also emerged in 1998 -- online auctions and swap meets, where the seller pays a small commission to the host site. Amazon may have dispensed with brick-and-mortar stores, but Ebay even got rid of the warehouse.