Commercialization of the Internet

The creation of the Internet has brought about many changes, ranging from the way we work, play, communicate and live. More generally, it has brought about a new era, the Internet age. The first company to be floated on an Index was Netscape. This left a mark in history on the 9^th of August of 1995 with its IPO. During this time, the Internet was addressed a lot via the media. There was much emphasis was elaborated on enormous commercial opportunities that the ‘Net’ would bring. At this time, the Internet did not have many users but it was estimated that within a matter of only a few years, the Net would expand rapidly. A company like Netscape would be able to reach this huge market, which was attractive to investors.

When Netscape finally floated, its share price rose immediately and before the first day of trading was over, its share price had doubled. This very sharp increase in Netscape’s share price made its investors enormous amounts of profit in a very short period of time. The image of a prosperous future by investing in Internet companies spread throughout the world. Soon, an outburst of dotcoms hit the Internet, all with great hopes and expectations for the future.

During the following years, many other dotcom companies became public listed. The same story with Netscape was repeated and the confidence in dotcom stocks increased drastically and much profit was made. On the whole, the dotcom industry was booming with ideas and a promising future for investors.

Today, the Internet has approximately 300 millions users and this figure has been doubling every year. Two thousand dotcom companies have been created and more than 150 of these have become public listed, in the span of a mere couple of years. Normally, a company has to develop over at least ten years before it gets listed on an Index, which is a reasonable amount of time. This development time is crucial as it builds the reputation and infrastructure of the company.

 However, the dotcom industry developed much faster than any traditional company, with respect to becoming listed on an Index and to its increase in share price performance.