Information availability prior to Internet:
Information available for us before Internet is scattered in different sources like books, newspapers, encyclopedias, magazines, museums and libraries. Collection of required data or searching for data used to take lot of time. For example, prior to Internet, information about any medical treatment for any disease was a time consuming process. People used to refer different books in libraries and other sources for days together to get the necessary information. But with Internet, any information is available within minutes.

Changes brought by Internet:
The advent of the Internet has been one of the most exciting major events in the second half of the 20th century. Information is shared among all humans with the help of Internet. A big advantage of Internet is the availability of information with quick accessibility than ever before. One can access information in a book that is available in a library, in the other part of the world with just a click of mouse. Unlike the books in the libraries, information online is constantly reviewed and updated frequently.

Information Era:
Internet became a public domain in the 1980’s. From then availability of information was permanently revolutionized and grown tremendously. Information era has changed the lives of all humans either directly or indirectly. Information on almost every topic is obtained at high speed and more easily available than ever before. This new level of information availability and accessibility is influencing the dynamics of the global markets as well as personal lives. Remarkably, information is not only accessible to all but can be created by and distributed to almost everybody.

Everyone can enjoy the unmatched prosperity of global information resources by connecting to the Internet. The advent of the Internet has increased the efficiency of the information availability. With this, significant increase in level of information endowment in a variety of fields is observed.

Internet and the Information age
The age before Information was called the Industrial age where people had to face scarcity of information and time lag to access the available information. Today, Internet has evolved to be a crucial medium in distributing and accessing the relevant information within no time. Internet is also the fastest growing media that has the capability to impact the social, technological, economical and political activities of people, all over the world. This can be compared with the Information revolution brought by the invention of printing press.

Accessibility of information at any time
In this information age, the competition among businesses has grown incredibly all around the world in all kind of industries. It is unaffordable for any competent business to succumb to information limitations, in order to sustain in the competitive environment. Control of the availability of the information is no longer confined to the few people. People are free to communicate, work and access information round the clock from anywhere in the world. It is through Internet that the communications have grown incredibly and leveraged outsourcing of services to such a big extent.

Information for decision making
For any Information-age organization, it is the information that is going to help to sustain the competition. The success of any organization in the information age relies with the speed and accuracy of gaining relevant information and making effective decisions based on it. No other medium is as effective or reliable as Internet for such purposes. There is a vast amount of information available on internet on any field, which can be collected, analyzed, and then used for effective decision making.

Indeed, the internet has become an indispensable tool in the part and parcel of people’s lives, as it gained influence in information distribution. The role of the internet as a useful, practical, and even essential, information tool by other forms of media is increasing and is a clear example of the information era powered by Internet.

Remarkably, there is an immense amount of information online that is not only accessible to all but can be created and shared by almost everybody. According to a claim by Google, there are around 8.1 billion documents online and are growing rapidly. A team of researchers from SIMS – University of California claims that the size of the information on the World Wide Web is 170 terabytes. Information of about 170 terabytes is equal to ten times of the information available in the Library of Congress. This new height of information availability and accessibility is influencing the dynamics of the global markets as well as regional businesses more or less equally.

Most of the data available online is in English as it is the most popular language online. More than 80% of home pages on the Web are in English, while the next greatest, German, has only 4.5% and Japanese 3.1%, according to englishenglish.com. Clearly, this means more information in English is available online than any other language.

The above statistics from various sources reiterates that the information available online is not only abundant but also growing rapidly at an exponential pace. This vast size of the information available never earlier in the history of mankind, sometimes becomes a challenge for the business researchers to find the reliable and credible information within it.

The major contributors of the information online that is useful for the businesses are market research companies, industry associations, related-industry web sites, competitor companies’ websites and government sources like www.bls.gov. Information from various sources from a variety of backgrounds can help online researchers to crosscheck and validate the data they are collecting for the research purpose. Information thus derived from the online secondary research is good enough to give insight into the research issue and help the businesses in well-informed decision making to the extent possible.

The increased efficiency of the information availability has significantly increased the level of information endowment on a variety of fields of marketing and business as a whole. The abundance of information available online that is instantly accessible at low or no cost has certainly created a great resource for secondary research for businesses.

Impact on People

The availability of information online has facilitated people with the ease of accessing the required information and utilize it for efficient living. People use information available online in a variety of formats like video, audio, presentations, text and images for wide variety of purpose like Shopping, Education, Health, etc.

If they want to know more about any historical incident instead of going to library for earlier copies of newspapers, they can accesses any kind of details with a click. People can access global news on any topic from international journals without subscribing it and being shipped to their homes. Information available online helps people in making efficient purchase decisions. People have latest Information online about new products, price comparisons, product reviews, and fashion trends.

There are many websites that provide information on anything, right at the instance. Websites, like Encyclopedia Britannica, Google maps, which provide reliable information, are very popular. People use this information to solve their problems, to improve their knowledge, to elucidate their doubts, etc. more efficiently and effortlessly.

Impact on Businesses

For businesses it is a more helpful to have vast amount information backing their way of doing business. They can accesses information from various sources and perspectives, which helps in judging the market situations more accurately. Businesses could access information, which was not available about their competitors and their moves. With the evaluation of the information online they could know the pulse of the customer.

Information available online became an essential ingredient for businesses in making crucial and successful decisions like designing marketing campaigns, launching new products, etc. They can access latest information from reliable sources at an instance which helps them take quicker and viable decisions. Using information available online also helps businesses improve their bottom line as it costs far less than traditional forms of marketing research.

The easier access of valuable information helped to be aware of many social issues in the world like global warming, AIDS, terrorism, etc. The vast amount of information available online has helped people and businesses to come out of information deficiency and information time lag implying they are well informed about anything that leads to overall betterment of the society.