In its earliest stages, the Internet was a non-commercial space, and marketing online was virtually unknown. With the advent of the consumer Internet and the WWW, that began to change. Corporations began to establish presences on the Internet and to treat the Internet as a sales and marketing channel. In addition, a new form of business started to come into being - companies whose primary method of doing business was over the Internet, rather than via "brick and mortar" channels (Amazon.com is probably the best-known and most successful of these).