Best in brief: B2B and the dotcom crash

Brief description of the dotcom shakeout, with especial reference to business-to-business exchanges. Survivors tend to be breakthrough applications which 'rewrote the rules by creating new products and services'.

Best In Brief

B2B and the dotcom crash

George S. Day, Adam J. Fein and Gregg Ruppersberger

Douglas WestUniversity of Westminster

 

Fifteen years ago there were just over 830 PC manufacturers; now there are arguably 8 to 10 viable survivors. Just about every internet market faces the same statistics, but the abruptness of the shakeout in the dotcom boom took many people by surprise.

One of the most hotly contested dotcom areas was online business-to-business exchanges, with nearly 300 formed in 1999 and over 1500 at the peak in 2000. Most entrants were pure-play operators such as...

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