Tech Bubble

There have been a few tech bubbles in history. The most famous: the Internet Bubble in 1997-2000, when companies less than a year old, with no revenues or even decent business ideas, could go public for hundreds of millions of dollars and lots of prayer.

Bubbles are often driven by some major new breakthrough. In this case, it was the advent of the commercial internet, wherein the U.S. government essentially opened up the back-end of Darpanet, the guts and infrastructure of the Defense Department's communications response to the threat of thermonuclear war. And, like most bubbles, this one ended badly, with a Barron's Magazine article published in the middle of March which suggested that the Emperor's new clothes were, um, not there.

So the bubble burst, and the few companies of quality survived and eventually thrived.