Boomtime

The first internet boom began in April 1996 when Yahoo listed on the US stock market. By this time there were over nine million internet hosts, which grew to more than 16 million by 1997.

The internet began to attract popular attention and many new companies formed to create applications and content for the world-wide-web. Many financiers stepped in to invest funds in these companies and soon they began listing on stock markets around the world.

By 1998, there were over two million registered domain names and before the year ended this reached three million. Google opened its doors as a company while Netscape was sold to AOL for US$4.2 billion.

The following year, there were over US$5.3 billion in sales over the internet, many through companies that had not existed two years ago. The US, Australian and other stock markets were going wild about internet stocks, with their value increasing rapidly.

By the end of 1999, there were over five million domain names registered and the internet had seen widespread growth in the number of viruses, with the Melissa virus in particular affecting millions of computers.

Netscape was also facing increasing competition in the web browser market from Microsoft , whose Microsoft Internet Explorer was gaining in popularity, supported by being included free with every Windows-based computer.

During 1999, there was widespread concern over the Y2K – or year 2000 bug – which was related to old software that only used two digit years. The concern was that this software used 00 to represent 1900 and so when 2000 rolled around the software would think it was 1900 and fail, causing widespread disruption.

Despite several books and major global concern, very few problems were reported, such as the US timekeeper reporting the date of 1 January 2000 as 1 January 1900.

By 2000 it was estimated that over 300 million people worldwide had internet access and the number of web pages exceeded a billion. The internet had spawned thousands of new companies creating online services and tens of thousands of people were working in jobs and industries that did not exist ten years before.

However the good times were about to come to an end.