Netscape goes public. Priced at $28, it closes its first day at $58.25 and fires the starting gun for internet stocks.
Fed Chair Greenspan warns of "irrational exuberance". The Nasdaq goes on to more than triple.
AOL agrees to buy Netscape for $4.2bn. Netscape had opened its browser source code in February; it lives on as Mozilla and Firefox.
The Fed starts hiking. Six moves take the policy rate from 4.75% to 6.5% by May 2000.
476 US IPOs this year, with an average first-day gain of 71% (Jay Ritter's data).
AOL and Time Warner announce their merger, an internet company swallowing an old-media giant.
Yahoo Japan's share price hits ¥167.9 million. On 19 January it had become the first listed Japanese stock above ¥100 million a share.
The Nasdaq Composite sets its closing high at 5,048.62.
Cisco passes Microsoft to become the world's most valuable company (reported at $555–569bn).
Hikari Tsushin hits limit-down for 20 straight trading days after a profit warning. From ¥241,000 in February it falls to ¥895 by 2002.
Pets.com announces its liquidation, less than a year after its IPO.
Online grocer Webvan goes bankrupt.
Global Crossing, builder of undersea fibre networks, files for bankruptcy.
WorldCom files for bankruptcy. With $107bn of assets it is the largest in US history at the time, and rests on massive accounting fraud.
The Nasdaq Composite bottoms at 1,114.11, -78% below the peak.
Google goes public, a company that grew on the cheap bandwidth, servers and talent the bust left behind.
Telecom gear maker Nortel goes bankrupt. In 2011 its ~6,000 patents sell for $4.5bn to a consortium including Apple and Microsoft (Google bid up to $4.4bn).
The Nasdaq Composite regains its 2000 high, 15.1 years later.
Cisco finally closes above its March 2000 high, 25.7 years later.
| Layer | Gone | Bought or sold | Survived | Came later and won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Telecom infrastructure (fibre) | Global Crossing, WorldCom (fraud), 360networks and other debt-funded network builders | ST Telemedia took 61.5% of Global Crossing for $250m; Verizon bought WorldCom's successor MCI for $8.5bn in 2006 | The fibre itself. About 95% was estimated to be unlit in 2001, and it later carried the video and cloud era | Internet firms that used the cheap capacity (YouTube, Netflix streaming) |
| Telecom gear (the picks and shovels) | Nortel (bankrupt in 2009) | Lucent merged with Alcatel and now sits, Bell Labs and all, inside Nokia. Oracle bought Sun for $7.4bn in 2010; Java lives on | Cisco, though its share price took more than 25 years to regain its 2000 high | Apple, Microsoft and others who bought the patents |
| Portals and search | Excite@Home (bankrupt in 2001) | Terra paid $12.5bn for Lycos in 2000 and sold it to Korea's Daum for about $100m (under 1%) in 2004. AltaVista passed via Overture to Yahoo | Yahoo, until it sold its core business to Verizon for $4.48bn in 2017 | Google (founded 1998, listed 2004) |
| E-commerce and web services | Pets.com, Webvan, eToys and more | Webvan VP Doug Herrington joined Amazon in 2005 and launched AmazonFresh in 2007; he now runs Amazon's stores business | Amazon, eBay and Priceline (now Booking), each after falls of 70–99% | Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005) and others born after the bust |
| Peak | Low | Peak to low | Back to the peak | Now vs the 2000 peak | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasdaq Composite | Mar 2000 | Oct 2002 | -77.9% | Apr 2015 (15.1 yrs) | +436% |
| Nasdaq-100 | Mar 2000 | Oct 2002 | -82.9% | Nov 2015 (15.6 yrs) | +551% |
| PHLX Semiconductor Index | Mar 2000 | Oct 2002 | -83.9% | Nov 2017 (17.7 yrs) | +851% |
| Cisco | Mar 2000 | Oct 2002 | -89.3% | Dec 2025 (25.7 yrs) | +33% |
| Intel | Aug 2000 | Oct 2002 | -82.3% | Apr 2026 (25.6 yrs) | +64% |
| Qualcomm | Jan 2000 | Aug 2002 | -86.8% | Nov 2019 (19.8 yrs) | +125% |
| Oracle | Sep 2000 | Jun 2002 | -84.2% | Jun 2017 (16.8 yrs) | +196% |
| Microsoft | Dec 1999 | Dec 2000 | -65.2% | Oct 2016 (16.8 yrs) | +767% |
| Apple | Mar 2000 | Apr 2003 | -81.8% | Jan 2005 (4.8 yrs) | +26,393% |
| Amazon | Dec 1999 | Sep 2001 | -94.4% | Oct 2009 (9.9 yrs) | +4,580% |
| eBay | Mar 2000 | Dec 2000 | -77.1% | Dec 2003 (3.7 yrs) | +741% |
| Priceline (now Booking) | Apr 1999 | Oct 2002 | -99.3% | Sep 2013 (14.4 yrs) | +321% |
| Nikkei 225 | Apr 2000 | Apr 2003 | -63.5% | Jun 2015 (15.2 yrs) | +219% |
| SoftBank (now SoftBank Group) | Feb 2000 | Nov 2002 | -98.6% | Feb 2021 (21.0 yrs) | +148% |
Only companies still listed today appear here: the ones that went bust (Pets.com, Webvan, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Nortel…) went to zero and are not in the price data. Peak = highest close in 1999–2001; low = lowest close after the peak up to 2003. Prices are split-adjusted closes excluding dividends (Yahoo Finance).
Companies disappeared; their technology, networks and people did not.
The company died but its wireless and networking know-how kept a high price. Google, outbid, announced a patent-driven purchase of Motorola's handset business that August.
Netscape the product vanished, but its open-sourced code became Firefox and kept browser competition alive.
A network that cost billions changed hands for a sliver and kept running. The infrastructure ended up belonging not to its builders but to those who picked it up cheaply.
Former Webvan executives built grocery delivery inside Amazon. What a company learned by pouring money into warehouses too early paid off inside one that could afford to wait.
The server giant that called itself "the dot in dot-com". Its hardware faded, but Java and MySQL survived inside Oracle.
The textbook case of buying at the top. Big deals struck in a boom land on the acquirer's shareholders.
Japan had its own version. Yahoo Japan's shares passed ¥100 million each in January 2000, and Hikari Tsushin, a mobile phone retailer, fell for 20 straight days at the daily limit after a profit warning. SoftBank, whose stakes in internet companies briefly made it Japan's second most valuable company, lost 98.6% from its Feb 2000 high and took 21 years to get back.
The fibre builders went bust from overbuilding, but the fibre stayed, and Google and YouTube grew on top of it once it was cheap.
Cisco and Intel had real sales and profits, but when customers stopped spending their shares fell 80–90% and took more than 25 years to regain their 2000 highs.
The casualties were debt-funded builders (the carriers) and firms that burned their cash before revenue arrived (Webvan, Pets.com). Amazon's shares fell over 90%, but it reached profitability before the money ran out.
Updated 28 Sep 2026 10:50 JST · prices to 25 Sep 2026