Last Monday morning, after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision to rein in the illegal sharing of music files on the Web, the Internet was humming with the news.
On SCOTUSblog, a Web site sponsored by a Washington law firm, Lyle Denniston, a veteran legal journalist, was posting the news and analysis while an array of legal experts offered their views of what the court had decided.
Reports on the court's decision appeared on the home pages of millions of Internet users linked to their favorite news sources by RSS reader software. Others were listening to analysis of the court's decisions on podcasts downloaded from the Web.
There is still lots on the Web to complain about - from poor security to spam and pop-up ads to balky e-mail and browser programs. Despite all that, the Web is in the midst of a revolution - evolving rapidly into an increasingly sophisticated and useful tool for living.
There are two important reasons for the gains. More than half of all at-home Internet users have high-speed connections, and there has been a rapid development of software tools to help users manage the vast sea of Internet media.
Once limited by slow downloads and inadequate Web tools, users are now able to do much more.
As a consequence, more and more people are going online to view, listen or download a wide array of media, to play games, to shop at increasingly elaborate Web sites, to read the news, contribute to blogs, share photos and, of course, to chat online, frequently with a camera turned on.
About 67 percent of all Americans now use the Web, says a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project taken in February and March. User demographics are impressive, the survey indicates. About 84 percent of all 18- to-29-year-olds now get online, as do 89 percent of college graduates and 85 percent of those earning $50,000 to $75,000.
Internet commerce is continuing to grow at a double-digit pace as do the profits and business potential of Google and other online companies. Nearly $10 billion was spent on Internet advertising last year, and sales on the Internet increased in the first quarter of this year increased to nearly $20 billion, nearly 24 percent higher than in the corresponding period of 2004, the Census Bureau reported in May.
Enthusiasm about the growing economic power of the Internet has helped Google's stock price climb from under $100 a share when the company went public last summer to nearly $300 a share last week.
