Re:Viewing 2002 - Whatever happened to the dot-coms?

By 2002 everybody was familiar with the idea that the whole dot-com phenomenon wasn't man's greatest success - but it was also a year in which the few survivors from the school of 2000 began to find their feet. Here, Will Sturgeon brings you the highlights of a mixed year for online businesses, as well as a few of the wonderful stories that characterise silicon.com's coverage of the 'weird web'...

If you were looking for signs that the web was beginning to eat itself in early 2002 then look no further than eBay which started the year getting fat by auctioning off bankrupt company memorabilia.

While all-things Enron were the top traded lots (see http://www.silicon.com/a50499 for more), demand was still high for the remains of several failed dot-coms.

But if you think that's tasteless, you hadn't counted on Kay Hammond who enjoyed short-lived fame on the back of one particular auction.

Hammond's USP was her willingness to auction off her own hand in marriage to the highest bidder, above a £250,000 reserve price. Many said it was a shameless PR stunt, others branded it tantamount to prostitution, while Hammond herself insisted it was a heartfelt attempt to find true love (http://www.silicon.com/a50282 for more).

Predictably, however, after several phoney bids from anonymous pranksters the auction fizzled out and Hammond's 'fifteen minutes' were over.

Other interesting lots to come under the cyber hammer included AOL's designer CDs - further proof, if any were needed, that a cannibalistic web was becoming more and more self-sufficient (http://www.silicon.com/a56091), Captain Kirk's chair (http://www.silicon.com/a54091), a place in the Cambridge United squad (http://www.silicon.com/a54035) and loveless Norwegian Dominique Femerström who tried to ride the Kay Hammond bandwagon to little success (...when he could potentially have ridden the real thing for £250,000 ... boom, boom).

However, one final auction-related story which deserves special mention is that of the 'teenage Rambo' (http://www.silicon.com/a53754) who successfully bid for $1.3m worth of military hardware on eBay.

The boy used a family friend's account to buy, amongst other things, a helicopter and a jet fighter plane - only drawing attention from the authorities when the family friend was asked when and where she wanted her fighter plane delivered and how she intended to pay for it all.

While the sale fell through, it clearly did eBay no harm at all. With publicity such as this it's no wonder the pioneering auction site was among the year's biggest dot-com winners (http://www.silicon.com/a54676).

But e-tail is about more than just auction sites as the continued success of all-conquering Amazon showed. The year started well for Jeff Bezos and co with the company delivering on its promise of profitability in its first quarter (http://www.silicon.com/a50620).

Perhaps hoping to further spice up its profits for the year, Amazon jumped the gun on the release of the long-awaited 'Ginger' scooter (aka The Segway Human Transporter) in September - emailing customers who had registered an interest to tell them the (http://www.silicon.com/a55532) high-tech transporter was "now available". However, it later admitted the email was sent in error. Wishful thinking perhaps.

More wishful thinking abounded with the next results announcement in October. It looked like a loss, and even smelled like a loss, but Jeff Bezos seemed to be insisting that 'if you squint a bit' it definitely looked like a profit (see http://www.silicon.com/a56106 for more).

However, with Amazon's year end approaching the company will be hopeful of a seasonal boost from Christmas sales, especially following the introduction of free delivery, which should see even more people doing their Christmas shopping online this yuletide (http://www.silicon.com/a56240).

Another bellwether dot-com which flirted with profit in 2002 was lastminute.com. In February the company promised profit by June (http://www.silicon.com/a51173). By June the best it had managed was a halving of losses - £5.3m short of breakeven - but come November, hallelujah, lastminute.com announced its first ever profitable quarter. Well done Martha and Brent - we never doubted you.

2002 also carried a few surprises which were even closer to home than Lastminute's SW1 offices.

In Chelsea, West London, home to silicon.com for the past four years, news broke in July that the company was being bought by US giant CNet Networks.

Having covered news from and about the dot-com sector for almost half a decade, silicon.com had become the news. The downside of the deal was that a number of excellent staff left the company as it moved to new offices across town. The plus side was that silicon.com, under new owners, now had greater security and stability which enables us to concentrate on continuing to deliver our own unique brand of IT news.

The second part of this article continues here http://www.silicon.com/a56909. So read on for the scandal of Brian Tindle, the shame of Trevor Luxton, Google's march to world domination and more irreverent news from the 'weird web'.