25 YEARS OF DOT-COMS
1985 Symbolics became the first company to register as a dot-com, on March 15. The domain survives today, but the Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer failed to keep up with the evolution of the PC industry. Of the six dot-coms registered in its first year, only one was not involved in computing: defence contractor Northrop.
1990 Barely a few hundred dot-coms were registered during the 1980s, but after Tim Berners-Lee put up the first website in 1990 (info.cern.ch) from his base at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, the concept took off.
1995 The flotation of Netscape ushered in a dot-com boom, after its value rose to $2.8 billion in one day. A year later, while the PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin were busy working on the nascent Google, Yahoo!’s share price tripled on its first day of trading.
2000 Two months after AOL.com acquired Time Warner in a $164 billion deal, the dot-com boom reached its zenith on March 10. Nine weeks later, the fashion website Boo.com collapsed after an 18-month lifespan during which venture capitalists had invested £135 million. In 2000, there were 63 dot-com millionaires on The Sunday Times Rich List; a year later, there were 26.
2005 Three PayPal employees launched the video sharing site YouTube.com with a clip entitled:“Me at the zoo.” Just 19 months later, it was bought by Google for $1.65 billion.
2010 Ten years after Nasdaq’s index of tech and biotech stocks peaked at over 5,132, it now hovers around the 2,300 mark, having bottomed out at 1,114 in 2002. Google is ranked as the world’s biggest brand, and in 2009 was valued at $100 billion, according to the financial consultants Millward Brown.
1990 Barely a few hundred dot-coms were registered during the 1980s, but after Tim Berners-Lee put up the first website in 1990 (info.cern.ch) from his base at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, the concept took off.
1995 The flotation of Netscape ushered in a dot-com boom, after its value rose to $2.8 billion in one day. A year later, while the PhD students Larry Page and Sergey Brin were busy working on the nascent Google, Yahoo!’s share price tripled on its first day of trading.
2000 Two months after AOL.com acquired Time Warner in a $164 billion deal, the dot-com boom reached its zenith on March 10. Nine weeks later, the fashion website Boo.com collapsed after an 18-month lifespan during which venture capitalists had invested £135 million. In 2000, there were 63 dot-com millionaires on The Sunday Times Rich List; a year later, there were 26.
2005 Three PayPal employees launched the video sharing site YouTube.com with a clip entitled:“Me at the zoo.” Just 19 months later, it was bought by Google for $1.65 billion.
2010 Ten years after Nasdaq’s index of tech and biotech stocks peaked at over 5,132, it now hovers around the 2,300 mark, having bottomed out at 1,114 in 2002. Google is ranked as the world’s biggest brand, and in 2009 was valued at $100 billion, according to the financial consultants Millward Brown.
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