Aug 22, 2001, 11:40pm

I'm feeling bad vibes for the Internet as a whole.

I look back a year ago, and things were pretty cool. Especially with eCommerce. Up here in Canuckland, things looked bad, but were looking up - Banks here in Canada, still with their "fuck you" mentality to pretty much any start up business were not handing out merchant accounts with hefty ($50K or more) deposits for EACH credit card you wanted to accept, but changes from independants such as Yahoo Stores and Paypal were supposedly in the works that would bypass banks. ECommerce in Canada basically sucked, but you did have Chapters with a good product range, Onvia with good product range AND discounts and coupons if you looked hard enough, and it seemed every month a few new promising stores would open up online.

In the States, things were even better. Even though the dot.com implosion was starting its full swing (having started in April 2000), there was still tons of selection online and lots of deals if you hunted hard enough. Last year I probably spent about half of my discretionary income online.

Skip forward to today. Things are very, very worse. In Canada, Onvia is gone (it was sad to watch). Chapters is a mere shell of what it used to be. Futile Shop is online, but nary a deal and besides, you shouldn't buy from them anyway. And ecommerce in Canada has pretty much died as a dream. Thank you Internet downturn, and also, thank you Canadian Banks.

The US is almost as bad. Sure, lots of selection still, but deal hunting is going the way of the dodo. I remember last year buying some items at amazing prices because I found something during a "one day sale". This year, they don't exist. A place I got some steals from, Tavolo, is dead, and the company that bought it, OurHouse.com, is currently dying. Buy.com shut down their Canadian operation, and the US one is going downhill. eToys? History, and I guess many are happy with that one.

Sure, the "steals" had something to do with it all, but it's more than that. Variety is missing. Canadian eCommerce is so depressing it hurts. What stores are online in Canada are so Mickey Mouse it frightens me. And the well is definitely drying up....

Where will it all go?

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