The dot-com bubble (also referred to as the dot-com boom, the
Internet bubble and the Information Technology Bubble) was a
historic speculative bubble covering roughly 1997–2000 (with a
climax on March 10, 2000, with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52 in
intraday trading before closing at 5048.62) during which stock
markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise
rapidly from growth in the Internet sector and related fields.
While the latter part was a boom and bust cycle, the Internet
boom is sometimes meant to refer to the steady commercial growth
of the Internet with the advent of the World Wide Web, as
exemplified by the first release of the Mosaic web browser in
1993, and continuing through the 1990s. The period was marked by
the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a
group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as
dot-coms. Companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if
they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name or a ".com" to
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