I think there certainly was a milestone in the '90s with regards to the Internet achieving critical mass. There were several magical factors that came together: the creation of HTML by Tim Berners-Lee, the drop in the price of communications, and all the PCs out there that you could put this software into.
Bill GatesA bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is. And lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you'll go out of business.
Bill Gates