From dot-com to dot boom

1994 to 2000 observed a massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet due to advances in digital connectivity. Computer was no longer a luxury but a necessity. Many online shopping companies emerged and this gave birth to an economy that was based on information technology. A dot-com refers to a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website on the World Wide Web that bears a top-level domain “.com”. With Bill Gates’ forecast of an approaching “Internet Tidal Wave”, and the surge of share prices of Internet Netscape from an opening US$28 to $75 within hours when it went public in August 1995, people became speculated about the prospect of making money on Internet dot.coms. Online shopping was then widely perceived as a new way of doing business, and excited investors blindly bet on dot-com stocks and paid significantly more than their fundamental value. It was this big discrepancy between perceived value and actual worth, together with an absence of practical business plans and experienced CEOs in the dot-coms, that created a market bubble that doomed to burst in March, 2000. Though technology companies of a market value of 5 trillion did erase in the following 2 years, and thousands of IT workers went jobless, I think such bubble burst has served its function in bettering the environment for e-commerce. Buying online is a big business and to get big takes time. Construction period must be allowed to let pioneers remedy their mis- steps and mistakes. Share prices of Internet firms have to be evaluated on their actual profits or sales rather than just a proposed future. Today, companies like Amazon that survived the burst have become household names, and the World Wide Web stands as the greatest publishing platform in history. The end of the dot-com boom is definitely not the end of dot- com.