We believe consumers' growing familiarity and confidence with online shopping, coupled with a dramatic increase in broadband penetration and continuing efforts by retailers to simplify the shopping process across channels, will translate to substantial gains for online merchants again this year.

We've just closed another great year in online commerce. Consumers spent an average of $200 million per day throughout November and December, bringing holiday growth to just about the top end of our forecast of 25 to 30 percent.

Online travel sales fared even better this year. The sector was up 35 percent versus 2002 and has more than more than doubled since 2001. Non-travel sales recovered impressively from war-related softness early in the year, with 2003 posting a healthy 22 percent total increase over 2002.

Retailers turn a profit by bringing in new merchandise and pushing self-purchase categories like lingerie, shoes and denim. Retailing is an event-oriented business. Look at any national holiday, retailers seize on it and find a way to market heavily and drive traffic.

Certainly, in the same way the Web has leveled the playing field for businesses of all sizes to compete, search has taken that one step further. It allows Mom and Pops to get that much closer to shoppers they wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with.

You see on the tape that they (the defendants) are celebrating. They are mugging for the camera and making crude comments. They're dancing around. They know that she's unresponsive, they know that she's unconscious. They're deciding what to do next. They're competing with each other to see who can do the worst things to her.