ABSTRACT
Today, the meaning of the title ‘beyond the dot.coms’ is ambiguous. This was not the case as recently as a few months ago. If we focus first and foremost on the companies that use the Internet to provide their services – that is the dot.coms themselves – it is not only the development of their share prices that would lead us to assume we are dealing with a speculative bubble without any enduring effect on the real economy. After the frenzy of the last few years, companies providing services over the Internet are, in fact, facing a serious crisis. Just over a year ago, all signs were still pointing unequivocally to a continued boom and the new startups that were shooting up like mushrooms were finding it difficult to recruit staff. In summer 2001, however, the situation has changed totally. Since January 2000, at least 555 Internet companies have had to close down worldwide. Sixty per cent of these closures took place in the first six months of 2001.1
The impact of the closures on the labour market has been equally dramatic. In the USA alone, around 880 dot.coms have laid off more than 130,000 staff since the beginning of 2000.2 This trend shows the enormous difficulties evidently faced by Internet companies in creating and implementing a profitable business model. But are we to conclude from this that the new economy does not exist? Does ‘beyond the dot.coms’ mean ‘back to the old economy’?
