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Comment by fr0sty | Hacker News Reader

related yes, but not directly involved. cars.com is advertising because you still drive to the dealership to buy the car. You research appliances or siding online but you get them at HomeDepot. You print your grocery coupons from a website but you buy your milk/cheese/eggs/cereal/etc. from $LocalGrocer. And as mentioned elsewhere, you will not be buying gasoline over the internet anytime soon.

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Well in Denmark at least there are several online groceries doing very well with delivery directly to the door.

Also services like Waitersonwheels and in Europe justeat.com deliver restaurant food directly to your door.

With regards to cars the it's the transaction between buyer and seller thats important.

I also seem to remember that several homedepot shops in europe are doing pretty well.

With regards to gazoline then sure but that still leaves a lot of other areas well served.

I think you are setting up some fake boundaries with regards to what constitute e-commerce in most of those areas.

In the UK online grocery shopping is actually pretty sizeable, especially amongst the younger people. All the major brands provide the service. Anecdotal but I know a number of people who bought their car off of eBay. I have no counterexamples against everything else but except for gasoline, which is hard to imagine working out, just because things have always been a certain way does not mean they will continue to be so.

You research appliances online but you get them at HomeDepot.

Expect that to change fast. In fact, a lot of people already do the opposite. They go to stores to look at the thing and then order online because it's cheaper.

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