The Bubble

In 1995 Microsoft released the first version of Internet Explorer , putting a web browser on every PC owner's desktop. As Internet adoption increased, a major marketing point was that once you had the Internet, you could "Surf the Web." The Internet was described as an "Information Superhighway" and all those websites were speeding down that highway to your computer as fast as your fingertips could call them up.

By 1997 the world was in a full on "Dot-Com Boom ." Enthusiasm about technology, mixed with a lack of historical record for comparison allowed markets around the world to grow extremely fast in technology categories. Companies seized on the moment and tried to add something "e" or ".com" to their product portfolio.

This is the era when Amazon became a household word, when Google figured out that simple interfaces would get people to click, and when Americans abandoned travel agencies in droves in favor of sites like Expedia.com. This is the time period in which people were getting email addresses at places they didn't go to work or school: Hotmail and Yahoo! ruled the web-based email world. There were many stable companies created and built up during this time, but in general there was an overvaluation of technology stocks.

Once the bubble burst, between 2000 and 2001, some companies went out of business entirely, while others simply lost a lot of money. This era taught people what a URL looks like--people saw domains show up on advertising and packaging for the first times. They used tools like IMDB to settle movie trivia debates. For the first time, the network was present in our mainstream offline interactions.

The bubble was a small setback for the burgeoning web, but things were falling in place to make the web move much further, much faster.