Black Friday Online was outstanding; bricks-and-mortar ... not so much

It was a record-breaking Black Friday for PayPal

The reports from bricks-and-mortar retailers showed that this year's business was up less than a percent, but online commerce seems to be booming. PayPal didn't discuss the total dollars involved, but claimed that they handled 20% more transactions than last year. That's a mammoth amount of money, because PayPal handles something like a quarter of all online business.

Similarly, the QVC shopping channel reported a 60% increase over last year.

So people are spending, but they are not going to stores. Will bricks-and-mortar retailing be the next dinosaur to be rendered extinct by the Alvarez Online Hypothesis?