Over the past several years, the insurance industry has been a juicy target for Internet arbiters. Even the recent dot-com meltdownhasn't slowed the attack. According to the pundits, the insurance industry is a herd of dinosaurs facing eventual extinction.

But facts seem to suggest otherwise. It's difficult to find even one real "New Economy" insurance Internet success story. Is the Internet "steamroller" really an empty threat-as some carriers and agents now want to believe? Is less there than meets the eye? Can the industry finally exhale and get back to really critical issues-such as whether a correcting market is in the offing? Or is there something about the Internet that is very important to the industry...although perhaps not what was initially imagined and sold?

The General Bill of Goods

One of the most telling phrases of the Internet cognoscenti has been "They (or you) just don't get it." If you had to ask what "it" meant, that was clear evidence you were an idiot trapped in last century's business and technology metaphors. Of course, to some of us an ineffable "it" implies a ruse-or at least underlying confusion on the part of the party purveying "it."

Another classic expressed over and over was "the Internet changes everything." All existing business rules were being overturned. Clever "e-commerce first-movers" would annihilate traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses. We'd have a "frictionless marketplace" within which classic intermediaries, such insurance agents, would be irrelevant. "B2C," "B2B," "B2B2C," "Internet pure plays," "industry exchanges," "portals," "click-through rates," "eyeballs," "banner ads," "bricks-and-clicks," and other Internet-related jargon suggested that a fundamental shift in the economy was underway. Just as the Industrial Age succeeded the Agricultural Age, we were on the cusp of another massive sea change, paradigm shift, or watershed to the-dare we say-"Internet Age."