A global speculative rise in share prices between c.1997 and 2000 driven by the alleged opportunities for profit presented by the Internet. Access to the Internet, and especially to the World Wide Web, became widespread in the mid-1990s, and many new companies proposed utilizing it in various ways. (These companies generally had websites with names ending in “.com”, whence the term “dotcom”.) Because the Internet was a new medium, new business models that ignored the “old” economic rules were accepted uncritically. Most Internet start-up companies did not expect to make money in the short term, but rather emphasized the scope for major long-term growth. Financed by stock-exchange flotations or venture capital, they sought to build market share by offering free services, with the expectation that they could begin charging when they were securely established; in the meantime, the rise in their share prices fuelled by this expectation of future success would satisfy their investors. A classic stock-market “bubble” developed, with euphoria at rising share values spreading to non-Internet shares. The bubble burst in 2000: Internet start-up companies began to exhaust their start-up capital and go bankrupt, confidence collapsed, and share prices began a long decline.