Building a Better Boom

Are we headed for another DOT-COM bubble? Will we once again see a repeat of old mistakes with Internet companies? Some people out there believe it is quite possible.

IT sure feels like a bubble, doesn’t it? Let’s tick off the signs: a red-hot market for Internet stocks (Google, for example, has more than quadrupled since it went public in 2004); fawning articles celebrating entrepreneurs; a glut of venture capitalists elbowing one another to invest in companies with no plans on how to make money past some hand waving about “advertising” and plenty of vague claims about how their technology will “change the world.”

The Internet is exciting again, and once again folks are rushing in. In some categories - like search or social networking, for example - there are scores of start-ups vying for pretty much the same market, and it’s certain that, just like last time, most of them will fail. [Read the rest]

[tags]google,dot-com boom,internet bubble[/tags]