What does this mean and how does it affect us, especially in the area of ecommerce, search engines, web statistics, security, etc?

What does what mean?

IPv6 or IP version 6 is the next generation Internet protocol which will eventually replace the current protocol IPv4. IPv6 has a number of improvements and simplifications when compared to IPv4. The primary difference is that IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses as compared to the 32 bit addresses used with IPv4. Among other things, this improvement is expected to make assigning address to wireless devices easier and accommodate the myriad smart network enabled devices that will surround us in the future.
IPv6 and IPv4 will coexist on the Internet for quite a while. Currently much of the IPv6 Internet exists as tunnels over the existing IPv4 Internet.

Once IPv6 is widely adopted...the dearth for IP's with disappear......!

Its been said that .. when th IPv6 adoption is complete, every grain of sand on the planet earth can have an IP and still be left with more..yeah I know, its an exaggeration..but sure get the intensity of the statement...!?

I just read that with IPv6 every square inch of the earth's surface area can be assigned 430,381,032,076,568,144,027 different addresses.

That should be enough to give every toaster it's own IP :cool:

Yes but remember, IPv6 is such a long and complicated system I doubt anyone will want to type in those IPs, or at least not for webhosting, it doesn't matter what IP your toaster has :)

I rarely type any ips, allways use ctrl c then ctrl v so it wont make any difference to me lol. Just think how much software would have to be change though :(

That is my concern, how much the software will have to change. For example, ipchains, web stats, virtual site setup, etc?