A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com (alternatively rendered dot.com, dot com, dotcom or .com), is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website on the World Wide Web that uses the popular top-level domain ".com".[1]
The suffix .com in a URL usually (but not always) refers to a commercial or for-profit entity, as opposed to a non-commercial entity or non-profit organization, which usually use .org. Since the .com companies are web-based, often their products or services are delivered via web-based mechanisms, even when physical products are involved. On the other hand, some .com companies do not offer any physical products.[2]
Dot-com bubble
While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used about companies with this business model that came into being during the late 1990s with the rapid growth of the World Wide Web.[3] Many such startups were formed to take advantage of the surplus of venture capital funding and were launched with thin business plans, sometimes with just an idea and a catchy name. The stated goal was often to "get big fast", i.e. to capture a majority share of whatever market was being entered. The exit strategy usually included an IPO and a large payoff for the founders. Others were existing companies that re-styled themselves as Internet companies, many of them legally changing their names to incorporate a .com suffix.
The stock market crash around 2000 that ended the dot-com bubble resulted in many failed and failing dot-com companies, which were referred to punningly as dot-bombs,[4] dot-cons[5] or dot-gones.[6] Many of the surviving firms dropped the .com suffix from their names.[7]
See also
- Brick and mortar
- Dot-com commercials during Super Bowl XXXIV
- List of largest Internet companies
Notes and references
- ^ "dot com company". TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
- ^ Investopedia (2018). "Dotcom". Investopedia. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
- ^ Inc.com (2018). "Dot-Coms". Inc.com. Retrieved 10 October 2018.
- ^ "What detonated dot-bombs?". USA Today. December 28, 2000. Archived from the original on June 26, 2001. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
- ^ Skillings, Jonathan. "Explaining the "dot-cons"". ZDNet.
- ^ Fisher, David (2001-12-13). "From dotcoms to dotgones..." Evening Standard. Retrieved 2013-07-19.
- ^ Glasner, Joanne (2001-08-31). "Dot's In A Name No More". Wired news. Archived from the original on 2006-07-16. Retrieved 2005-12-27.
External links
| External video | |
|---|---|
 Web StartUps, Net Cafe |