The “Dot-com” era, also known as the “dot-com bubble” was an economic bubble that lasted from 1998 to 2001 and was a period in which many internet based companies were established.  Born largely out of the numerous technology companies such as Google and Yahoo based in Silicon Valley in California, the “dot-com” era gained momentum when many companies found that establishing internet based businesses or simply adding an “e-” prefix or “.com” suffix to the company name often caused company stock prices to shoot up.

Many of the internet based companies founded during this era are known as “dot-com” companies.  These companies experiences record-setting rises in stock values, causing many companies to move faster and with less caution than usual.  The main goal of these “dot-com” companies was to establish as large a network as possible in order to attract as large a customer base as possible.  For this reason, many companies such as Google and Amazon did not see any profit in their first years.  Many companies worked upon the wisdom of the day: “Get large or get lost.”  However, by 2000, the economy was beginning to lose speed, right after the Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times during the period of 1999 to early 2000.  The dot-com bubble burst on March 10, 2000, when the NASDAQ fell due to what some think was caused by the massive, multi-billion dollar sell orders for major high-tech companies’ stocks such as Cisco, IBM, and Dell, which happened by chance to be processed in the same day.  By the end of the dot-com era, many online companies ran out of capital and were acquired or liquidated.  However, a few large dot-com companies such as Amazon and eBay survived the turmoil, while others such as Google emerged as mega-firms dominating the online industry.

Situated in the southern region of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, Silicon Valley is the center of the high-tech industry for California.  Silicon Valley gained its name from the large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, even though many other high-tech industries have also become associated with Silicon Valley.  Silicon Valley is also the leading technology hub in the United States.

Since the twentieth century, Silicon Valley has been home to a large, yet still growing, electronics and high-tech industry.  Some of the many technology industries centered in the region include radio, television, computer, and military electronics.  Some of the many inventions and advances made in technology related to the development of the microprocessor, microcomputer were made in Silicon Valley.  Stanford University has also played a major role in the development of Silicon Valley. The university established the Stanford Industrial Park, which is home to where Hewlett-Packard, the popular PC designer and manufacturer was born into a major, established corporation.  Eastman Kodak and General Electric are other major technology companies that have established themselves in the Stanford Industrial Park.  Some of the other technology companies established in Silicon Valley include Adobe Systems, Apple Inc., eBay, Google, Yahoo, Intel, Oracle, Nvidia, Intuit, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).