Online goes mainstream

As the Internet moved from buzzword to basic for many Americans, it remained in the news -- but as the backdrop, not the focus.

In legal news, browsers were big -- and Microsoft was perhaps a bit too big for the Justice Department. In December, a federal judge barred Microsoft from insisting that PC vendors who want its Windows 95 operating system also buy Internet Explorer, its web browser.

But the news wasn't all bad; the judge turned down the Justice Department's request for a $1 million a day fine -- an amount that could have depleted Bill Gates' fortune in only 110 years.

As the holiday shopping season approached, shoppers of non-Gatesian means saw the appeal of shopping in a virtual mall and lugging virtual packages home in virtual traffic. Even an overplayed metaphor is better than the traffic around a real-life mall in December.

A half-billion dollar market in 1996, online shopping was expected to top $2.4 billion in 1997, and $10 billion by the turn of the century. Though security concerns persist, the combination of more secure software and safety in numbers has overcome the fears of many shoppers.

The Web came into its own as a medium for the masses, for better or worse. Matt Drudge, editor of an online newsletter, found himself at the business end of a $30 million libel suit when he claimed that presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal had a history of beating his wife.

The Drudge Report had been online since 1995, and was increasingly cited in the mainstream press -- until the Blumenthal suit. Suddenly, some say belatedly, the question for online journalism became the same as for online shopping -- can we trust this thing?