During the New Economy boom, e-commerce was seen as the most important form of trade for the future. A few years later, after an initial downturn and the failure of numerous internet startups, e-commerce was already declared dead by many. However, an objective examination of today's e-commerce activities shows that the internet has firmly established itself as a distribution channel—albeit in a different configuration than expected years ago: physical goods are predominantly traded rather than digital ones. Moreover, the providers are often traditional, regional retailers rather than global startups. Against this backdrop, the reasons for the dominance of traditional companies in e-commerce are analyzed, and recommendations for multichannel companies are derived. Using utility effect chains, it is demonstrated how the profit contribution of the internet sales channel can be measured in multichannel companies.