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> Look at the dot-com boom. A lot of people lost a whole lot of paper money, but it brought us a cheap worldwide fiber backbone and companies like Amazon and Go

> Look at the dot-com boom. A lot of people lost a whole lot of paper money, but it brought us a cheap worldwide fiber backbone and companies like Amazon and Google. If the point the author is trying to make is that Amazon and Google were made possible by the dotcom boom, and that the collapse of the dotcom bubble was part of the price we as a society had to pay to have the services provided these companies, that's a really really bad argument. Amazon was founded in 1995 and IPO'ed in 1997, before the IPO market got crazy. Google was founded in 1997 and IPO'ed in 2004 when tech stocks were still a punchline. Neither of these companies is an example of any kind of silver lining for your Uncle Bob losing thousand of bucks after buying into a rapidly appreciating security (or currency) whose underlying value he does not understand whatsoever.

qaq 9y ago
Google bought a ton of dark fiber for cents on the dollar. So the bust did enable Google to develop much more rapidly and with much smaller $ investment.
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  This applies to pretty much any company/individual that took advantage of the market prices. And not just dark fiber, but pretty much all infrastructure.
- leroy_masochist 9y ago
  Yes, and the boom times of 1998-2000 inspired a bunch of young people to spend more time learning about tech, and some of them grew up to be programmers who added significant value at Google and Amazon. There are lots of these kinds of secondary effects and many of them were significant, such as your fiber example, which is a good one. The point though, is that both Google and Amazon were able to get themselves off of the ground without taking advantage of all the stupid money that flooded the Valley in the 1998-2000 time period, quite to the contrary of the argument I quoted in the parent comment.
Goladus 9y ago
If the point the author is trying to make is that Amazon and Google were made possible by the dotcom boom, and that the collapse of the dotcom bubble was part of the price we as a society had to pay to have the services provided these companies, that's a really really bad argument. Well, the article actually refers to that argument as a "desperate rationalization," although rather than delving into refuting the analogy he focuses on his primary thesis which is that right now, the speculative bubble is preventing any real determination of whether the blockchain technology has (or does not have) any practical uses.
- zodPod 9y ago
  You're absolutely right! I'm not sure why the parent thought that this article was trying to make a real point there at all. Gives me the impression that he/she didn't read past the first sentence before making that comment.
  - Goladus 9y ago
    Well, I think the parent just wanted to clear up any confusion about the validity of comparing the dotcom bubble with the crypto bubble. Also, to be fair, the TC Article's author is fairly optimistic about the possibilities in crypto/decentralized apps. At least during the dotcom boom, the deluge of foolish money was vaguely aimed at truly revolutionary technology that had been proven useful for over a decade, and had recently produced legitimate companies with traditional, viable, revenue-generating business models.
danans 9y ago
Google also picked up a lot of employees who were drawn to the SF Bay for the dot com boom, and were laid off from the dot coms in the bust. It didn't hurt to have a large pool of ambitious and underutilized technical folks around to choose from.

qaq 9y ago

Google bought a ton of dark fiber for cents on the dollar. So the bust did enable Google to develop much more rapidly and with much smaller $ investment.

zeroxfe 9y ago
This applies to pretty much any company/individual that took advantage of the market prices. And not just dark fiber, but pretty much all infrastructure.
leroy_masochist 9y ago
Yes, and the boom times of 1998-2000 inspired a bunch of young people to spend more time learning about tech, and some of them grew up to be programmers who added significant value at Google and Amazon. There are lots of these kinds of secondary effects and many of them were significant, such as your fiber example, which is a good one. The point though, is that both Google and Amazon were able to get themselves off of the ground without taking advantage of all the stupid money that flooded the Valley in the 1998-2000 time period, quite to the contrary of the argument I quoted in the parent comment.

Goladus 9y ago

If the point the author is trying to make is that Amazon and Google were made possible by the dotcom boom, and that the collapse of the dotcom bubble was part of the price we as a society had to pay to have the services provided these companies, that's a really really bad argument. Well, the article actually refers to that argument as a "desperate rationalization," although rather than delving into refuting the analogy he focuses on his primary thesis which is that right now, the speculative bubble is preventing any real determination of whether the blockchain technology has (or does not have) any practical uses.

zodPod 9y ago
You're absolutely right! I'm not sure why the parent thought that this article was trying to make a real point there at all. Gives me the impression that he/she didn't read past the first sentence before making that comment.
- Goladus 9y ago
  Well, I think the parent just wanted to clear up any confusion about the validity of comparing the dotcom bubble with the crypto bubble. Also, to be fair, the TC Article's author is fairly optimistic about the possibilities in crypto/decentralized apps. At least during the dotcom boom, the deluge of foolish money was vaguely aimed at truly revolutionary technology that had been proven useful for over a decade, and had recently produced legitimate companies with traditional, viable, revenue-generating business models.

danans 9y ago

Google also picked up a lot of employees who were drawn to the SF Bay for the dot com boom, and were laid off from the dot coms in the bust. It didn't hurt to have a large pool of ambitious and underutilized technical folks around to choose from.