Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

John Deighton said that direct-to-consumer internet advertising was here to stay, but “home-delivered groceries? Never.”58 There was no way to compete with supermarket efficiencies. Deighton’s prediction was—not to belabor the point—wrong. But whereas the conventional narrative was that dot-coms drowned themselves in wasteful spending, Deighton did see that it was the relation between the internet and the real economy that needed to change.