What was going on with the Internet in 1999 — The IPO Boom!
Dr. Koop, the health information website co-founded in 1998 by Reagan administration Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop, created a lot of excitement when it secured $88.5 million in its June 1999 initial public offering. The site was quickly ranked the No. 1 health care content site on the Internet, with an average of around 1.4 million unique visitors per month in 1999.
In November 1999, Webvan's IPO raised $375 million and was valued at $1.2 billion.
Etoys raised $166.4 million in a May, 1999 IPO.
Even though it reported a $4.9 million loss in the first quarter of 1999, Ask.com (originally known as Ask Jeeves) went ahead with an July IPO and shares shot up a jaw-dropping 364 percent in its first-day of trading giving the company a market capitalization of $1.6 billion. It was a spectacular success and ranked as the third most successful first day performance in business history at that time.
Napster, the music sharing service, was founded in 1999. At its peak, the Napster service had about 80 million registered users. Napster made it relatively easy for music enthusiasts to download copies of songs that were otherwise difficult to obtain, such as older songs, unreleased recordings, studio recordings, and songs from concert bootleg recordings. The company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement and ceased operations in 2001.
In 1999, the number of websites with their own designated URL was 3,177,453*.
* www.internetlivestats.com