WhereIsAtlas · Economic event
The Dot-Com Bubble
When any company with '.com' in its name was worth a fortune
Concluded — Ran roughly 1995–2000; the NASDAQ lost 78% of its value in the crash that followed.
The dot-com bubble was a five-year episode in which the public markets priced the internet as if the future had already arrived. Netscape's 1995 IPO — shares soaring from $28 to $75 on day one for a company losing money — lit the fuse; IPOs with no profits, no products and names ending in '.com' routinely doubled overnight.
The NASDAQ Composite climbed from under 1,000 in 1995 to an intraday peak of 5,132.52 on 10 March 2000. Then the air left: rates rose, cash ran out, and companies like Pets.com, Webvan and eToys collapsed within months of listing. By October 2002 the index had fallen 78 percent, erasing roughly $5 trillion in paper wealth.
The paradox is what came next: the bubble's wreckage fertilised everything. The fibre laid during the mania, the talent set loose by layoffs, and the survivors that kept building — Amazon, eBay, Google (founded 1998) — powered the real internet economy. Historians now treat the era less as a fraud than as the internet's premature, expensive adolescence.
Quick facts
- Period
- c. 1995 – March 2000
- NASDAQ peak
- 5,132.52 (Mar 10, 2000)
- Peak-to-trough loss
- ≈ 78%
- Wealth erased
- ≈ $5 trillion
- Famous failures
- Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, theGlobe.com
- Famous survivors
- Amazon, eBay, Priceline, Google (1998)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Dot-com bubble — Wikipedia (2026-01-10)
- Dot-com bubble, 20 years on — BBC News (2025-12-01)
- NASDAQ historical data — NASDAQ (2025-12-01)