The one certain thing about predicting the future of e-commerce is that we ain't seen nothing yet. The selling of goods to consumers via the world wide web (e-commerce) is less than five years old in the United States while e-businesss (company to company transactions) are even younger.

Britain is at least two years behind the US in both areas (though catching up) so we can at least get early warning of what might happen to us by monitoring events in the US.

Expect two countervailing forces over the next year or two: explosion and implosion. Explosion because of the way industry - led by the largest companies in the world - will move their delivery and supply chains to the web. Ford and General Motors have already transferred hundreds of billions of dollars worth of business to the net. Others will follow - or be impaled by the loss in competitiveness involved in not doing so. The business-to-business side of the web explosion will be far and away the biggest phenomenon (about 80% of all web business activity) but it will be all but invisible to the consumer. All you will see is the dead bodies.

Implosion because there will be, as night follows day, a shakeout of the early internet start-up companies. This will happen in two bursts. First the puncturing of some of the more ludicrous values put on some of the bubble.com companies on the stock markets followed by the actual failure of a number of first wave companies.

At the moment the people who should be making money -the risk taking pioneers of web trading - are nearly all making losses while those who wouldn't be there but for the pioneers - the manufacturers of the infrastructure and the lawyers and accountants - are coining it. This doesn't mean web trading is doomed- it will eventually take over the world - but not in the way people expect now and not necessarily by the same pioneering companies.

In hardly any previous revolutions have the pioneers taken the cream and no one has yet provided a convincing case why the net has made an essential difference. People often ask whether the internet revolution is like the tulip speculations in 17th century Holland, the Californian gold rush of 1849 or the Victorian railway mania. The answer is that although there are similarities (like the famed shovel manufacturers who cleaned up in the the gold rush like the component suppliers now) there is one crucial difference.

For the first time there is a global infrastructure that is (almost) freely available in industrialised countries. You don't have to build your own railway to get in on the act. This will make it easier to try out your own new ideas than at any other time.

But never before have there been so many potential competitors all over the world. This leads many pundits to say that the Big Brands, backed by limitless advertising budgets will win. Don't be so sure. The same web that has enabled giants to go global has also enabled consumers to respond globally. That contest is only just beginning.