[zikduruqe]

> This is the weirdest technology market that I’ve seen.

You must have not lived through the dot com boom. There was almost everything under the sun was being sold under a website that started with an "e". ePets, ePlants, eStamps, eUnderwear, eStocks, eCards, eInvites.....

[jfengel]

Those things all worked, and all of those products still exist in one form or another. It was a business question of who would provide it, not a technology question.

[baggachipz]

The Pets.ai Super Bowl commercial will trigger the burst.

[staticman2]

That was certainly a bubble but I don't think pets.com was doing a research experiment.

From what I recall there were some biotech stocks in that era that do fit the bill.

[ricardobeat]

It's funny that the Netherlands seems to still live in the dotcom boom to this day. Want to adopt a pet? verhuisdieren.nl. Want to buy wall art? wall-art.nl. Need cat5 cable? kabelshop.nl. 8/10 times there is a (legit) online store for whatever you need, to the point where one of the local e-commerce giants (Coolblue) buys this type of domain and aliases them to their main site.

[KPGv2]

This is still the case in the US, too. I don't know why people are talking like it stopped happening. amazon.com, amazon.com, amazon.com, amazon.com

All these things are still e-tail here, too. We didn't go back to B&M.

[ricardobeat]

I was making commentary about the niche/independent nature of these online retailers (another example: graszaaddirect.nl, specialized in grass seeds), not that e-commerce itself survived the bubble.

Having a dense country where you reach any opposite end in <3 hours is probably a major factor. You don't really care where it's coming from (sometimes it's Germany) as delivery time is the same. That would not be the case for the US, you'd require a web of distributors.

[thrance]

Pretty funny, looks like it works in France too! animaux.fr redirects to a pet adoption service, cable.fr looks like a cable-selling shop. artmural.fr exists but looks like a personal blog from a wall artist, rather than a shop.

[antonvs]

None of those were science experiments or research projects in any way.

[nailer]

It did make sense though. ePlants could have cornered the online nursery market. That is a valuable market. I think people were just too early. Payment and logistics hasn’t been figured out yet.

[aswanson]

Even hardware. eMachines.

[cheevly]

These are not the same.

[dolphinscorpion]

Yeah, this time is different. Really

[zikduruqe]

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

[bookofjoe]

flooz