Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever SoldRating: 3 ?Dot Caveat?
'Dot Caveat' or. Caveat, as is the only alliterative verbal 'bomb' that has not been dropped on the Internet and computing since the inevitable 'Dot Bomb' failures among the most significant forces ever to hit any economy have the latest wag, as Wall Street `nay-sayer' John Cassidy, and the Internet `bear' to end all bears on the market has now written the alliterative 'masterpiece' of Luddism expounding on the years 1995-2000. Cassidy has called his new book: 'Dot Con-The Greatest Story Ever Sold.' Since most all our Silicon Valley folks are atheists, who think religion is the greatest story ever sold, the title has its hilarity and nuances to bear as we cross it.
The greatest thing that has happened to computing and the Internet are the elegant and ugly failures that mark it's first days like Pierce Arrow and Edsel automobiles or the 'Spruce Goose' and 'Flying Wing' were to aircraft were to those industries and social changes that came with them. Failure is what makes us and our society grow stronger unless you are European, and anti-business, or as much anti-progressive as John Cassidy writing his new book, 'Dot Con.' Cassidy is selling an Internet and computing story with no comparisons to anything but his ego and bearishness. I do not like books like this.
Just forget 'caveat emptor' as you read 'Dot Con' as it is an interesting and flawed book. When we want a study in gullibility of readership deliberately put forth in authorship by failing to draw analogies to either the automotive or aircraft industry with computing and the Internet, just runoff and buy a copy of Cassidy's new book or search the dumpsters where it really belongs save for the good histories of the era applied to Cassidy's conclusions. Indeed Europeans managing Internet and Computing growth would have been disastrous as they do not allow those who fail back into business again. Cassidy still does not like the Internet from his horse-drawn buggy seat. He also made so many mistakes and typos that the book is a hilarious joke that includes not even getting the names of the founders of Microsoft correct, and many a fact gone agley.
The Latin 'caveat emptor' principle of 'let the buyer beware principle applied in early common law that the buyer of defective goods could not hold the seller legally responsible. The theory of the early common law was based on the assumption that the buyer was able to examine the goods for any obvious defects, and that if the goods had latent defects of which the seller was unaware the buyer should bear the loss.
'I told you so' Cassidy lampoons the Internet mania began a five-year run that was fueled in part by the media, the policies promoted by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, the rise of day trading, and the deluge of IPOs brought to market by firms such as Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch and their analyst cheerleaders Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget. 1995 is when Netscape went public, and since then the ingýnue has had many opportunities to succeed and fail. The wise insider has had more opportunities to profit, too. Cassidy did not buy enough Microsoft stock.
This is the nature of business, and life outside of utopian Europe and the socialism left sprawling and yawing in a gap of non-involvement typical of the 'leisure' society there. The best is yet to come from the Internet, computing, and the IT revolution. The most vital force in society is the IT revolution., and it may yet force change in the 'ding-dong' socialism of The European Union and it's Babel-like society where they have spent over ten years and still cannot decide what language to use for patents, as the rest of the world turns, unwise investors fail, and all of us look at the Internet, computing, and IT with far more respect than issuing from Cassidy in 'Dot Con,' which is a better name for his book than the history of the Internet and Computing. That 'Dot Con-The Greatest Story Ever Sold,' sells at all shows that Luddism is still alive and sporting websites. It made me so cross to read it that I even reviewed it. The EU ought to extend Cassidy honorary citizenship and a bureaucratic title and office for publishing it. He ought to be sent to Switzerland where there are no birds. They need him and his book to clean windscreens there. Other than humor I see no other use for it, since there are not enough birds there to foul the glass, or not enough failures to make IT any different than any other technological change in time.... | Rating: 3 A Boom and Bust Book
This is a generally interesting investigative report into the boom and bust of the Internet economy. An unexpected bonus is the appendix, a morbidly fascinating list of hundreds of failed dotcoms that have lost up to 99.9% of their value, if they even still exist. Cassidy's writing style is mostly enjoyable and he can keep the pages turning. Unfortunately there are several underlying problems to this book that keep it from being a real winner. One of Cassidy's big weaknesses is hard economics - watch for the maddeningly splotchy economic history and analysis, as an attempt to explain the dotcom craze, of chapters 9, 11, and 21. Cassidy's sense of historical flow is awful, as he spends most of the book (and especially the epilogue) making very unconvincing attempts to tie the dotocm craze into a historical continuum with the end of the Cold War and the Sept. 11 attacks. Plus basic fact checking is suspect, with many examples that have been noticed by other reviewers. The ones I noticed most were the claim that the Altair computer, invented in 1975, was named after a character in Star Wars, which appeared in 1977; plus the supposed invention of the modem by two garage dudes in 1978. Cassidy fails to mention that this was just a particular type of modem technology, although it was groundbreaking. But it wasn't THE modem, the basic technology of which had already been around for quite some time. Also watch out for the book's many typos, such as "Amber" Pennsylvania as the location of CDNow. It's actually Ambler. Cassidy also criticizes many of the players in the story, with a lordly they-should-have-known-better attitude, but he merely has the unfair advantage of 20/20 hindsight. These recurring writing and editing problems significantly damage the believability of this book, which could have been a very successful indictment of one of history's most ridiculous economic spectacles. | Rating: 1 A few errors
There are a number of errors in this book. For example, the author states that the Altair computer was named after a chracter in the movie Star Wars. Funny, Star Wars was released after the Altair. Hahah The Altair computer was named from a star named Altair. A glaring error and sloppy work that needed to be corrected before press time. Other errors follow. | Rating: 4 A good overview of the dot com bubble
John Cassidy provides a good synopsis of the key events that shaped the dot com stock bubble in the mid to late 90s and provides some good insight into what went wrong and why.
I would have preferred a bit more analysis as opposed to recitation of facts, however. The bulk of Cassidy's analysis only comes in the epilogue. Also, some further insight into why the main players did what they did would have been helpful. | Rating: 4 A great summarization
This book was bound to be controversial as it touched on a subject where many people made and lost massive amounts of money. I agree with a previous reviewer who said all of this has been written before. However, no where has someone provided a good historical of the total Dot.com bubble and this book does it perfectly.
Providing great insights into the stock market as well as management of the Treasury market by Greenspan, the author does a great job of providing an economic overview of the climate that helped create bubble, allowed it to flourish and eventually led to its demise.
This overall perspective now allows an interested reader to see how a bubble could happen. Everyone knew the stocks were overpriced but as long as they continued to go up, money managers could not refuse to hold the stocks as their yield comparsions would look so much worse than their competitors.
In summary, there is no new ground broken here. Just a valid analysis of a fascinating period in our history. | Rating: 5 A tale of our times for all times
John Cassidy writes a masterful chronicle of the dot.com years. It is rare to get the definitive history of an era so quickly after it has passed, but Cassidy's short and readable book does just that. For the lay reader with no background in economics or computer science, he explains just how financial bubbles evolve and what the forces were that led to absurd overvaluation of internet companies. He also weaves in profiles of the major personalities of the dot.com era as well as historical comparissions with earlier speculative bubbles. All the while Cassidy manages to be highly engaging and keep the reader hooked to the story. I have already recommend the book to all my friends and I hope you will enjoy it too. | Rating: 5 An Instant Classic
New Yorker financial writer, John Cassidy, says it all in this brilliantly rendered, highly entertaining account of the biggest economic scandal of the last twenty-five years--Enron who?--the crash and burn of the relentlessly hyped dot.com sector. One part historic overview, two parts searing indictman of the financial-technological-media nexus, Dot.Con--as the Wall Street Journal said last week--will be read by generations of Wharton and Harvard B school grads still unborn. Not since John Kenneth Galbraith have we had a popular economist with this kind of reach--or depth. Bravo. | Rating: 4 Barely history but a story dying to be told.
Intrigued immediately by the title, I was able to pick up an early copy of DOT.CON, a new offering by New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy. Even before donning the covers of this book, the title brought back memories, good and not-so-good, recounting the most turbulent and interesting perior in stock market history since the '29 Crash.
While the mania surrounding the internet has not waned, the investment in 'Dot.Com's' certainly has. The internet is here to stay however, we now know that the vast array of companies attempting to capitalize on the Net's popularity won't be as fortunate. Conversely, reliving the days of pugnacious entrepreneurs who were nothing more than keyboard simpletons, neophyte investors puffing their way through cocktail parties touting their latest security conquests and mindless, self-appointed gurus pontificating their seemingly clairvoyant ability to call the market (Miss Cleo makes these claims doesn't she?) was not necessarily something I considered worth remembering at present. However, I mustered all my courage and pushed on past the first page. I'm glad I did as Cassidy does a masterful job of highlighting the follies and tragedies of this short-lived era.
Cassidy draws many historical comparisons into his support for the development of the Net 'Bubble' and offers fresh insight into some of the orchestrated(?) events occurring behind the scenes as many first-time investors waited for the next merger announcement (do you still watch CNBC with your morning coffee?). His historical elocution takes the reader to the manias of the past supporting his hypothesization that the Net debacle was waiting in the wings for the unsuspecting investing public. He takes us back to the first mechanical computer in 1931 and works his way forward offering layman explanations for many Net buzzwords, definitions as solid as any Internet Dictionary. Similarly, Cassidy is very thorough in his review of the background of many of the early and prime Net players including, in many cases, information on their childhood, eduction, early careers (although many here were in their early careers when the Bubble burst), and what brought them to the forefront of this incredible story.
Cassidy focuses much of his energy, research and rhetoric on the happenings behind the scenes. He spoke to me when he began enumerating the obscure ways in which the Fed, Wall Street, VCs and promoters continued to stoke the Net fire even while it was primed to implode. He hits the nail on the head when he writes that VCs {and others} were using companies to create stocks instead of the fundamental methodology of using the stock market to raise capital to build companies. This point, among others, is critically poignant.
Much to my appreciation, Cassidy extolls mightily the role played by Alan Greenspan in this comedy. Many believe Greenspan to be the culprit who burst the Bubble with his monotonous albeit eviscerating interest rate hikes and comments like 'irrational exuberance.' Cassidy leans in this direction yet I believe his position to be a personal conviction rather than a technical indictment. (In my opinion, Cassidy relates this information in relatively non-biased terms.) Self-dealing and greed were the culprits here not one individual.
Overall, an enjoyable read although, as I mentioned earlier, the wounds are still a bit fresh to be rubbing salt in them (thus...4 stars). This will be a wonderful history book in 20 years or should I say, self-help book....'How Not to Invest Your Money.' Pick it up; its worth the read. | Rating: 1 Closing the barn door long after the horse has left
Dot-Com 'exposes' that are released two years after the boom crested are of questionable value. The subject has already been done many times, often better, by Internet Bubble, Morganstern's columns in the NY Times, others. Too little, much too late. | Rating: 4 Competent overview but not without flaws
The first thing you'd say about this book is that, however clever the title, it's erroneous: this isn't the story of a 'con' at all, it's the story of a speculative bubble.
The whole point is that no-one was 'conned' by the hot air. As Cassidy mentions from the outset, the prospectuses all contained large print health warnings in prominent places: 'THIS COMPANY HAS NEVER MADE ANY MONEY, MOST LIKELY NEVER WILL' - but the punters still bought and bought. There were many psychological and sociological factors at play, but deception was not one of them.
For all that, Dot Con is well researched, well written and entertaining into the bargain (my copy was the paperback second edition in which the typos & manifest errors spotted by keen Amazonians (none of which, in my view, was earth-shattering) had been corrected). Cassidy describes briefly and competently the history of the internet and the general financial environment of the last 50 years, and then takes you into the maelstrom of the bubble from 1995 to 2001, all of which he portrays in suitably stunned-mullet fashion. The new edition features a lengthy epilogue which surveys the wreckage and covers the subsequent inquiry into the practices of investment banking firms and their uneasy relationships with their research analysts, all of which is still very current.
While he doesn't really dwell on it, I think Cassidy would come out in favour of more market regulation and intervention: He's especially critical of the Fed's approach to monetary policy and the atmosphere on the street which led to the boom in the first place.
In some ways (though it's hardly fashionable to say so) the investment banking firms and fund managers were as much victims of this as anyone: while the roof is blowing off the market and the choice is to join in and make hay, or watch your competitors annexing large portions of your market share while you sit on your hands, it is a singular Wall Street firm indeed which chooses to sit the boom out.
In any event this is a thoughtful and well put together book and serves as a pretty good overview of some of the most remarkable times in the history of modern finance. | Rating: 1 Could not believe it!!
Gee, you would think that the author would get the name of the co-founder of Microsoft right in the book, but sadly he does not. The co-founder of Microsoft was Paul Allen, but the author states another name. He got Paul right, but the last name is wrong. What should this tell the reader?? | Rating: 1 Dot.con is the worst book I've ever read
This book is so full of bad information it just blows me away. What is presented as fact in the book is simply not true. I don't know where the author came up with the information he did. It is pure vapor.
This book was not just poorly written but it is full of gramatical and spelling errors. Hello spell check!
A waste of money. | Rating: 2 Easy read but idelogically driven
This is a good overview, albeit very superficial, of the factors that drove the irrational exhuberance of the late 90s. The role of the financial media, the so-called stock analysts, and others is explored and the consequence of the synergistic effects on the collective mind of the suckers who invested in the dot.com companies is highlighted. Despite the book develops a dry topic, the book is an easy read; it reads well and will most certainly capture the interest of many readers. On the negative side, this book can hardly be regarded as objective; the author has most certainly an ideological resentment against the Fed and Greenspan in particular. This is not necessarily a bad thing - however, the criticism revolves around serious innacuracies in terms of the outlook and the role of Greenspan and the Fed in the NASDAQ crash. It is unfortnate that the author had to resort to blatant lies when describing how the Fed and Greenspan viewed the role of the Internet and the growth of the dot.com stock bubble. Readers looking for a an interesting non-fiction book, may be keen to read this book but serious analysts of the background of the NASDAQ debacle should look elsewhere - the inaccuracies are far too overwhelming. | Rating: 4 Easy, informative book
Dot.con is a book that reads like a long 'New Yorker' article. I view this as a quality, given the subject matter. Despite the size of the '.com' bubble, its explanation is not as elusive as other speculative frenzies (e.g., 1929). The recent speculation is the outcome of 'herd behavior' on a massive scale, favored by unique historical conditions, such as the development of a new technology, the liquidity excess in the american markets, and a favorable economic environment. There are plenty of quantitative models and historical studies of such behavior. Cassidy spells out this early (quoting in the process Charles Mackay's seminal treatise), and gets it out of the way. What makes the book interesting is the intricate relationship--and amplification of speculative behavior--among the actors of the bubble: investment banks, venture capitalists, the media, the Federal Bank, entrepreneurs, and finally the american public. Taken individually, the actions of each group may appear greedy, dishonest, stupid. Placed in the proper context however, the judgement is more nuanced. Cassidy shows how the skeptical VCs, financiers and journalists were repeatedly proven wrong in the early stages of the speculation and decreased in number, to the point of extinction. Nowhere is the pressure to imitate the crowds more evident than in Mary Meeker's case, the poster boy of Wall Street hype. Cassidy partially exculpates for her behavior, based on the environment in which she operated. But the examples in the book abound. Noone gets out scot-free, save one or two honest Wall Street stock strategists on the verge of retirement. Cassidy is relatively lenient toward the individual investor, the world of finance, and the entepreneurs: after all, these people had an incentive in feeding the bubble. The author uses his venom for the media and the fed. These are two actor whose role was to inform and vigilate, not to speculate; hence they were failing in their most important role. With all the qualifications of the case, Cassidy heavily criticizes Greenspan, and stigmatizes Wired, CNBC, and Time. His point is well taken, and I would recommend the book because it takes the time and effort to spell out the whys and hows.
A final remark: in my edition (2003, with a post-9/11 afterward) there were very few typos and glaring mistake. For example, Altair was named after a star mentioned in Star Trek, not Star Wars, as mentioned by a reviewer. The early history of the internet is sketchy, but appropriately succint, given that the topic has been eviscerated in thousands of articles and books. On the other side, the events between 1993 and 2001 are covered in detail. | Rating: 1 Embarrassing errors, spelling mistakes and confused facts
This should be a book of fiction. I don't know if I can count all the obvious factual errors. Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has his name wrong. He claims the Altair computer was named after a character in Star Wars. If the Altair computer was invented in 1975, and Star Wars came out in 1977, how was that possible? Duh... The book states: "In 1978, two Chicago students, Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen, invented the modem...."
No they didn't! In 1977, Christensen wrote Xmodem, the first computer program used to transfer files between computers equipped with modems; a year later, he teamed with Seuss to create the first "bulletin board system" software.
Again, Duh....
The CON here is obviously the publisher, Hyberbole, who got conned by a financial writer who apparantly had a bunch of news snippets he gathered to form a book. There is NO STORY here. Just pieces of information pasted together to form a book. The sad part is, much of the information is mis-spelled, misunderstood by the author, grammictally incorrect or just plain false.
To think people are reading this and thinking they are "Learning" something about the internet craze would be like reading a science fiction novel and think you are learning about NASA. | Rating: 4 Excellent Historical Account of the Dot.com Bust
Mr. Cassidy writes an excellent historical account of the dot.com bust. He spices the historical information with good descriptions of why certain things were done according to "business rules." Having worked for a defunct .com myself, I found this book to be quite informative about the one end of business all the technicians and developers didn't want to know about -- the cash flow. Looking back, many of the warning signs that Mr. Cassidy notes were there for all of us in the company to have seen...if we had known what to look for. An excellent work on a piece of history we should all study much closer. | Rating: 5 Excellent, Highly Recommended.
An excellent account of the rise and fall of the Dot Com bubble. Starts with a history of the internet and the world wide web and then moves into a detailed chronicle of the 1994-2001 internet stock market bubble. For someone who knew a lot about the internet from 1998 onwards but little about the economy behind it, I found it a very interesting read and a great education. A great story, well written. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the stock market, the internet and especially e-commerce. | Rating: 4 Fascinating read
As someone who spent most of the 1990s in junior high and high school, this book was a fascinating entree into the 'irrational exhuberance' of the 1990s dot.com era, when any business remotely related to the internet could go public for millions (if not billions) of dollars, even with steady losses and without a solid business plan. It was amazing to me to read about the number of investors who would buy stock in companies that hadn't proven anything, but simply had a website and believed they could tap into a certain percentage of an already- existing market. This book gives you an understanding of how AOL, a brand new company with much lower annual profits, could essentially acquire Time Warner, a larger company that had shown the test of time. More than that, the book shows you how investors - in fact, all of America - were overtaken by greed, irrationality, and a pack mentality that was ultimately detrimental. I wasn't mature enough during the 90s to really understand what was going on, and so I'm glad I read this book. | Rating: 5 Finally, Somone 'Ventures' Down The Path and Crash
Thank you, John Cassidy!
As the get rich quick, good time rock and roll, everybody is a genius lifestyle of the 1990's rolled on, more and more money went into investments, mutual funds, bonds and retirement instruments. Then, the 'next big thing' hit... Time to suck the money......
Ahhh, the internet... Everybody gets rich! Fund managers, investment banks, VCs and Joe six pack funnel their safe monies from their retirement harbors to the next big thing. Dot.Coms. The trouble is it all crashes in 2000 and the drain hits the economy in 2001 and 2002. Where'd all the money go?
Mr. Cassidy does a great job laying out the different playing fields, the politics in control during this period, the major and minor figures and the end result. The speculators and the market hype were out of control.
Forget the fact that most of the 'ideas' were unproven and the companies had no cash flow. The business models were overly optomisitc and the Federal Government tooted their horns. What a wealth of information.
If one reads this with an open mind and a dose of reality you'll see where the money is (people still have it), why grandma has no retirement and why the economy of the 1990's was a shell game of double postings. It is laid out very well.
Maybe too much emphasis is placed on Alan Greenspan and not enough on the SEC and the Department of the Treasury?
Read this more than once..... There are great economic and investment lessons here. In some areas you would think you are reading the story of hustlers and confidence men. | Rating: 5 Get Big Fast!
John Creedy relates how Jeff Bezos had t-shirts with the Amazon.con's business plan 'Get Big Fast!' made up for Amazon.com employees to wear. The goal of getting big fast was the naive belief by Bezos that it a relatively simple thing to establish a monopolistic business enterprise. This incredidbly simple minded theory of monopoly development was accepted and talked up by Wall Street analysts, such as Mary Meeker and Henry Blodgett, who in turn were treated as if they were 'Nobel quality' economists, when in fact they were nothing more than common 'Wall Street pimps.'
Unfortunately, for the investors that bought this argument, monopoly is either based on the exclusive ownership of a crucial input, where Microsoft's operating system is a reasonable example, or a government obtained privilege, such as the right to broadcast on a particular frequency.
Of course pure monopoly is an abstraction, but it is interesting to note that Wall Mart, the inspiration of many internet retailers got big by becoming somewhat of a monopoly supplier in rural America where it was able to have regional markets more or less to itself. On the other hand, it is the nature of the internet to in theory eliminate the 'separate' markets of rural America, or the world to the extent there is free trade across borders. This should have been clear to Wall Street. After all, according to Creedy Bill Gates, someone who knows a thing or two about establishing monopoly power, in the second edition of his book, The Road Ahead, noted that the internet was a competition enabling device rather than a device to generate monopoly profit. | Rating: 3 Good book, but many details have already been told
Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold lacks the same level of insight and originality. For most readers who stay abreast of current events in technology and the Internet, there is not a lot of new information in the book. The Internet bubble crashed some years ago, so a book on the subject can't be expected to be too original.
The book details the anecdotes of such Internet personality as Jeff Bezos, Mary Meeker, James Cramer, Jeff Walker, and Henry Blodgett. Nonetheless, such stories have been detailed in numerous places numerous times.
Cassidy does provide some rather good insights of the personality and mindset of Alan Greenspan, and he does a great job of showing an economic overview of the atmosphere that helped create the Internet bubble and how it led to its ultimate demise. If anything, Cassidy's brief biography of Greenspan is a well-written defense of the Fed Chairman.
But for anyone who reads Forbes, Wired, or the New York Times on a regular basis, much of the details of Dot.con have already been told. This is proven in the book's bibliography, which references such periodicals numerous times. | Rating: 4 Good if dry coverage of dot.com bust
There have been a lot of books about the crash of the high tech market. This is one of the best. The coverage is thorough if at times tedious. Cassidy makes an excellent case that the lack of a business model and the prevalent 'greater fool' theory led to the demise of the Internet bubble. Too many pitched the idea that if their site captured just one percent of a [Hundred] billion-dollar market, than the firm would be a success. Only even one percent was a pipe dream, and perhaps a dozen firms had the same idea. And the 'greater fool' theory suggests that even if the originators are wrong, somebody else will be foolish enough to buy them out.
Cassidy concludes his good work with a lengthy table of dot.com failures, a sobering story in itself. Perhaps it is so sobering that the life and exhuberance of the subject drained away. I found the last third of the book to be more of a continuous litany of mistakes and I lost much of my interest. | Rating: 4 Good reference for future speculative bubbles... nice nuggest on Bezos, Greenspan and analysts. Few details on past bubbles...
After having read many stories about the companies that are mentioned in this book, I appreciated the way the author was able to put things in context, and his in depth research allowed an interesting peek on the human stories that some individuals faces:
From the 'lucky punches' (the story of the early PR coverage of amazon.com), to the difficult situation in which Greenspan found himself of either stopping the party or running the risk of letting it go to even higher levels of euphoria, I liked the way in which it provides details on how these people reacted or how they should have felt when they ended in the middle of the biggest speculative bubble that our generation has seen.
The space it devoted to stock analysts left me wanting to read more.. and IMHO the numbers frenzy that the author had providing details just before the crash was unnecessarily long and boring to read.
The book is somewhat old, and hence it misses interesting current phenomena (~Flickr, Youtube, and Google itself) but nonetheless it provides very valuable context on how the dot.com boom speculation happened.. and hopefully readers will get a sense of deja-vu whenever they find themselves in similar circumstances in the future. As I was curious on that area, the space devoted by the author to the dutch tulip bubble and the japan real estate bubble seemed too short. | Rating: 3 Good summary
All the stories were told many times in other books. There is nothing new about this book. However, it serves as a good summary for those CEOs or senior managers who wish to have a quick review of what happened in the last two years, but never paid attention to this dot.com industry, now dot.con..... | Rating: 5 Good Warning on never wasting your money on Dot.Com's agaim.
Well the book breaks it down to here was this quick and easy way to make money quick and Dot.Com stocks became way more then their real worth. Too much money investments,too many web-sites run by geeks who have no business sense, and little brain power led to the demise of this business trend just as fast as it began. Today the Internet is largly used by geeks who have no life and no class either. | Rating: 1 Hindsight rehash
This book is a hindsight rehash of dotcom events that will already be very familiar to anyone who has picked up the business section of a newspaper or any business magazine in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, as other reviewers have noted, the book is rife with errors. The author also fails to give proper credit to the bestselling book that exposed the dotcon while it was happening, "The Internet Bubble", released in the fall of 1999. | Rating: 4 Insightful of Modern History
This book is essentially a retelling of events swirling around the stock markets, the 90's booming economy, and how many investors managed to swindle stock holders and dotcom employees from the trust and 'promise' of enrichening their wallets. However, the smooth sail sunk quickly at the turn of the 21st Century as the ecnonomy nose-dived and the high technology revolution made a turn-around resulting in major job lay-offs, broken promises, stripping of 401(k) plans, while showcasing the TRUE ineptitude of founding dotcom CEOs.
I used to work for a dotcom here in San Francisco (known as QSpace.com, overtaken by iPlace.com, Inc.), and saw first hand the amount of stupidity stemming from QSpace's dumb, incompetent, and financially irresponsible CEO/founder to some of the useless, brown-nosing staff in marketing and business development. Then came the nasty take over by a stingy little man named Stu Siegel ('If you don't like being here, then you can go work somewhere else') out of Pennsylvania resulting in frugal maneuverings while mercilessly laying off employees on one ambush day in March of 2001, while CEO Eze stood by idly with a hypocritical expression of shock on his face. No one knew it was coming (except the CEO, surely), but it happened. Regardless, 'Dot Con' is a reminder to many who not only stood by objectively watching the news reports, but an interesting 'revisiting' to the center of the once mighty tech boom.
A fascinating read! | Rating: 4 Interesting But Flawed Roundup
Cassidy is a financial writer, and approaches the dot.com era from that standpoint. You won't read long stories about the bacchanalian excesses of the 'digerati' here, but you will get a sound explanation of how this absurd self-deluding mania started, grew and ended. His analysis of the role of various Wall Street analysts in fuelling the hype is brilliant. I hope some of them go to jail!
Caveat: The book is characterized by some laughable typos and not a few mistakes on technology subjects. Don't publishers employ proofreaders anymore? | Rating: 4 Keen analysis and overall good perspective
This book is a thorough reflection on the "New Age" economy, which was particularly driven by NASDAQ, high technology for the corporate masses, and the advent of the Internet. As someone who was coming of age in the corporate world at the turn of the century, I used to feel very guilty about letting a stack of Washington Posts pile up--I wanted to read the latest analysis about what was happening in the Internet sector so I could understand how and why it was eroding. After reading Dot.con I don't feel as bad about throwing away that stack of business sections!
Throughout most of the book I felt like I was reading a thoughtful and intelligent piece about the buildup, mania and erosion of the Internet economy. The author clearly did his homework with the analysis, but don't worry--the book isn't loaded with charts. For the most part I thought the author maintained an objective perspective that serves the reader well--though the analysis of September 11 struck me as hasty and a little sensational.
I would most recommend this book to an audience that takes an intellectual curiosity in the 1995-2001 American economy. Other readers have unfairly criticized this book for being predictable and redundant--I'm not sure they realize this book is supposed to be a history book and not a novel! | Rating: 3 Need a fact-checker
Good review of Internet bubble and crash. A few factual errors though on non-US events, ie. Thai baht was devalued July 1997, NOT 1996. | Rating: 4 No news..."history" well told
The all-too-familiar story of dizzying internet stock proces is told in an entertaining and reasonably sound manner. Though the book fails to bring to light anything new, it does provide an excellent summary of the events that led to the technological development, and the financial aspect of the 90's stock frenzy. While reading this book, we should keep in mind that predicting the past is not exactly difficult thing to do.Barring from a few embarrasing typos, the book is well presented and definetly deserves to be read..provides some good reference materials also in case anyone is interested to check up where the author brings his quotes or figures. Generally, a pleasurable reading experience and may learn a new "anecdote" or two about the Internet boom and gloom. | Rating: 2 Not good enough
The author failed to tell the whole story and should write more info.on the rise and fall of the CMGI Inc. How and why CMGI CEO David Wetherell blocked the merger between Lycos and USA network? Since CMGI was such an important company throughout the boom and the collapse of the internet stock sector. Basically the book is being written like a newspaper, only storytelling and the author provided no real explaination of the collapse of the nasdaq stock market. | Rating: 5 One of the Great Stories of Our Times.
I am a bit mystified by the fellow's remarks (as I am often mystified by Amazon reviewers) who says that there is little here that is new to a reader who kept abreast of the internet explosion (and subsequent implosion) in the New York Times, Forbes, and Wired. First of all, would he rather have had author John Cassidy make up some new facts to embellish an already incredible story? Or is he simply unable to see what a masterful synthesis of information his book is -- not to mention an insightful and cogent analysis of exactly what happened during the 'Technological Gold Rush' of the New Millenium? Or does he think it might be better for the average reader to wade through more than a decades' pile of Forbes, New York Times, and Wired periodicals rather than read this book? (Actually, anyone who can read through a copy of Wired once should be commended!)
Anyway, the story that Cassidy tells may not be an ennobling one, but it is certainly an astonishing and entertaining one, filled with hubris, greed, hype, charlatanism -- along with imagination, drama, and hope, too. Here from p. 314 is what might be considered its thesis:
'In retrospect, the period from 1989 to 2001 looks like an historic aberration, an extended time-out, during which the normal conditions of human conflict and international rivalry were temporarily suspended (for most people living in the West, at least). In this vacuum, technological utopianism and several other varieties of mushy thinking flourished.'
At any rate, I strongly suspect that people will be reading this book fifty years from now in order to get a contemporary account of what happened. | Rating: 5 So it really happened?
I loved this book! For a while there I was starting to wonder if the dot com boom was just a dream. But this book spelled it out, it set in stone, and as a victim of it, I felt like it brought closure to my experiences. I don't feel so stupid and alone anymore, at least not any more than most of America that eventually went along with the ride. The book tells the stories of many of the biggest firms, how they rose to power, how they go their funding, and how the expanded under false ideas and predictions. The author was surprisingly harsh on the Federal Reserve, which was a refreshing point of view as apposed to all the simple-minded free-marketer propaganda that the pundits and government officials spew constantly in the media, along with their hero-worship of Alan Greenspan. This book told the story of the dot com boom and bust, and probably since it was an experience that hit me so close to home, I really enjoyed it. While many are debating whether this experience was really a `bubble' because in a bubble things usually get worse after they burst, in this case productivity gains seem to be real, technology advances were real, and some real business did emerge (if only a few) from the carnage. But the dreams and promises of riches were definitely a bubble that burst for many. I myself was only in it for the experience from the start. But weren't we all... | Rating: 3 Some things do not change
The mass scam that went by the name of dot.com startups is merely the most recent in an endless line of schemes that the mass of [people] have benn conned into throughout history.I remember more prudent and wisened stock market players who knew the dot.com craze was merely the latest manifestation of the selling of imaginary castles in the sky.Too bad millions of [people] found out the hard way.If you want an overview of the carnage,then go ahead and pick up this book. | Rating: 4 Terrific and still timely
A 'vast Shakespearean farce'--that's John Cassidy's take on the Internet bubble. Dot.con is an intellectually rewarding book. The writing is exceptional, the research impeccable. Like a fastidious historian, Cassidy tracks the bubble from its beginnings to its demise, including the economic and psychological ramifications of Sept 11th, 2001. Besides Schiller's 'Irrational exuberance' and Startup.com, a documentary, dot.con stands as one of the best accounts of the dot.com debacle. Highly recommended. | Rating: 3 The Tech Boom from 50 years ago to Today!!!
I bought both this and Dot.Bomb, the story of Value America.com. They were both good reads and work well together. Reading Dot.Bomb, it was like reading a piece of fiction it's so hard to believe some of what was in the book was true, let along all of it. Dot.Con is a much more anaylitical overview of the period, starting from the beginning over 50 years ago. Both were good and I recommend read in conjuction with each other. | Rating: 3 They could have been more thorough...
An examination of the dot.com stock bubble. Amazing number of typos and wrong numbers. Interesting reading, but I really have a problem with books like this. They come off as knowing what was happening when it was happening. In reality, without the benefit of hindsight they are no more knowledgeable than we are. | Rating: 5 This book is spot on in recounting the madness
As a money manager who "didn't get it" in 1999 and was ridiculed by those who did, "Dot.con" is a chilling autopsy of the madness of the inflation and bursting of the internet/tech bubble. Cassidy does a fantastic job weaving the story out of the interests and perspectives of all of the players. In hindsight, it seems so unlikely that so many "smart" people would have taken part and/or been duped by this madness. As we all know, all but a select few drank the "New Economy" kool-aid. The book also highlights the conflicted nature of brokerage firms and industry analysts. I hope all of the people who got burned by the events of 1996-2000 have learned their lesson. Unfortunately, I fear that no lesson has been learned. | Rating: 5 Totally absorbing and enlightening
It seems incredible now, but just three short years ago, investors valued priceline.com, a startup retailer that was losing three dollars for every dollar it brought in, more than the entire U.S. airline industry. Two years later, you could not have traded this company for the cost of two Boeing 747s.
Priceline.com was not unique. Similar valuation absurdities happened hundreds of times during the late 1990s and 2000.
This fascinating book explains how such 'dot.cons', irrational exuberancy, and the stock market bubble that ended in 2000 came to pass. The writing is clear, fluent, comprehensive, insightful, and totally absorbing. It reminds me a lot of John Kenneth Galbraith's classic book 'The Great Crash of 1929', both in subject matter and style. As Galbraith himself says on the back cover 'I cannot recommend it more strongly.' What more can I say? | Rating: 5 Was it for real? Yes.
I enjoyed this book. This book is highly recommended as therapy for anyone who went thru the dot com boom and bust and wonders if it is all a dream. | Rating: 5 Well-written and entertaining
After a brief roundup of how the internet went from geek research tool to the "next big thing", Cassidy gives us the anatomy of a speculative bubble not quite like any other the world has ever seen. If in 1929, Bernard Baruch did indeed comment that once he heard shoe shine boys exchanging stock tips it was time to get out of the market, what would he have made of 1999 in New York City, when water cooler conversations revolved around catching the next big one? While this history is recent, and we may think we remember it only too well, it is good to get a reminder of just how insane the world became for a while.
The book is a fascinating read that places the bubble in its historical context. Cassidy's argument is convincing. From the growth in stock market participation through mutual funds and 401K plans, to the quick recovery from the 87 crash, to the perception that the internet would change everything, many factors combined to ignite the stock market of the late 90s and to lead people to believe they were looking at a one-way bet, which for a time they were. It's quite a ride. | Rating: 5 When will we ever learn
Do yourself a favor and a favor for your children and your children's children. Buy this book. Read it then put it away but in a prominent place so that when you or your future generations think the world has changed and there's a new world order and a new economic order. Take this book from the bookshelf and read it thoroughly before even beginning to make any financial judgements. | Rating: 5 Wonderfully entertaining account of the dot com era
As a freelance journalist who wrote about the the excesses of the dot com era for the British press, I found this book marvelously entertaining. Lurking just beneath the surface of Cassidy's deadpan style is a wonderful comic tale of snake oil salesmen, greedy capitalists and a seemingly endless stream of suckers. It's like a classic WC Fields comedy dressed up as a piece of sober reportage. And the beauty part is it's all true! | Rating: 5 Wonderfully entertaining account of the dot com era
As a freelance journalist who wrote about the the excesses of the dot com era for the British press, I found this book marvelously entertaining. Lurking just beneath the surface of Cassidy's deadpan style is a wonderful comic tale of snake oil salesman, greedy capitalists and a seemingly endless stream of suckers. It's like a classic WC Fields comedy dressed up as a piece of sober reportage. And the beauty part is it's all true! |
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