Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative boom in internet-related companies that peaked in 2000 and collapsed as share prices and business failures surged.

World Wide Web: A system of interlinked documents and resources accessed over the internet using web browsers. The web created the new commercial platform that investors expected startups to transform.
Alan Greenspan: An American economist who chaired the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006. His 1996 warning about irrational exuberance became a lasting reference point for concerns about soaring stock prices.
Amazon: An American technology and retail company founded as an online bookstore in 1994. It endured the crash and later built a profitable, diversified business unlike many failed dot-coms.
2001 recession: A recession in the United States that began in March 2001 and ended in November of that year. The technology-stock collapse contributed to falling investment and layoffs around the recession.
Netscape Navigator: A web browser released by Netscape in 1994 that helped popularize the World Wide Web. Netscape's rapid growth and 1995 public offering helped establish internet firms as major investment prospects.
Jeff Bezos: An American entrepreneur who founded Amazon in 1994 and served as its chief executive during its early growth. Amazon's survival through the crash made it a striking contrast to startups that failed.
Pets.com: An online pet-supply retailer launched in 1998 that became a prominent example of dot-com-era failure. Its rapid failure contrasts with internet businesses that eventually established sustainable economics.
Telecommunications crash: The collapse of many telecommunications firms after heavy investment in network capacity outpaced demand. Bankruptcies and falling equipment demand exposed a major infrastructure cost of the boom.
Telecommunications Act of 1996: A United States law that revised federal regulation of telecommunications and encouraged competition among providers. Its deregulation helped spur investment in telecommunications infrastructure used by the expanding internet.
Marc Andreessen: An American software engineer and entrepreneur who co-created the Mosaic browser and co-founded Netscape. Netscape's public-market debut and Andreessen's visibility helped define the era's internet-company optimism.

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