Among the many Internet-based technologies which emerged in the last ten years, the Extended Markup Language (widely known as XML) was the only one able to change the face of distributed computing, e-commerce and web services forever and in a radical manner. Using XML nowadays has important consequences on all kinds of business processes, as financial, accounting and business XML applications become more and more popular. Web 2.0, the latest “wave” of Internet based services (expected to replace most desktop applications in the near future) is XML-centered and so the evolution of XML reached a new level, far from being over. This literature review and action research follows the evolution of XML and its objective is to assess this technology’s impact on modern computing and business world during the nine years since its first version was adopted as a standard by the World Wide Web Consortium.