Y2K proved tumultuous right to the end
For the Internet, the start of the new millennium really did live up to all the hype. This was the year Microsoft was ordered to bifurcate, dot-coms tanked on Wall Street, WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers saw his merger mania capped and Napster scared the recording industry nearly to death.
Watershed is an understatement. It was a cascading waterfall of events that ended any doubts about the Net's ability to change the way we think, learn, play and do business. The year 2000 also offered ample evidence that the Internet is crossing the threshold into young adulthood, when grown-up responsibilities to stockholders and customers come before company beer blasts and mandatory all-staff paintball games.
Forget sleeping late and letting mom do the dishes. Companies that ignored good housekeeping ran directly into Uncle Sam: The government stepped in to track and regulate cyberspace as never before. From record numbers of Internet cases at the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission to congressional oversight of e-commerce taxation, it's obvious that Washington is now comfortable wading into an electronic realm it wasn't sure how to fathom just five years ago.
It was also a year of comeuppance, as some titanic egos were punctured by the marketplace. Stock analysts got fed up with Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos and his profitless prognostication; Gerry Laybourne's Oxygen Media was left gasping for air; and Iridium - the great white elephant of satellite systems - was sold for a paltry US$25 million to avoid burning up in the atmosphere.
- Randy Barrett, News Editor
