The Boston Consulting Group has produced a fascinating report on the power of the British Internet economy which now accounts for 7.2% of GDP. Based on advertising and online sales we are second only to the US in this dynamic sector of the economy. http://www.bcg.com/expertise_impact/publications/PublicationDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-62986
Industrial sectors measured by the BCG put real estate and business services as the largest sector at 23%; Manufacturing at 12%; Wholesale and retail at11%; Financial services at 9% ; Internet at 7.2%. The Internet affects every part of the British economy but if it was treated as a separate sector its notional size puts it in 5th place.
Conventional ways of measuring economic output don’t always draw our attention to the nature of tecnological change and I found this a thought provoking report.
It’s daft to say the internet is 10% of our economy. Nearly every sale made on the internet is a sale taken away from the high street. Most business activity does over the internet would have been done face to face had it not existed.
The internet is a fine tool for communication and for storage and retrieval of data but let’s avoid fallacies. The growth of amazon and other online retailers has come at the cost of closing local bookshops, electrical retaiklers, record shops etc.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Just wait until they get some decent tax advice and offshore all their export business.
Nothing the UK can do about that.