It will get better, it can't get worse

If you ask Jeff Bezos, the president of Amazon, the largest Internet store in the world, the year 2000 was very brutal, and he personally went from an Internet wizard to an Internet "Pure Power", which many yesterday's big friends shy away from. Exactly one year ago, Bezos' assets were estimated at eight billion dollars, while today he is "heavy" only about one and a half billion, which, you will agree, is a loss that brings tears to the eyes of Dafina's savers. In two hundred and fifty stock market days (excluding Saturdays and Sundays) most of the wonders wrought by the Internet in recent years have burst like bubblegum balloons, leaving their owners with plastered faces. Amazon and the Yahoo portal lost ninety percent of their value, and they are still shining examples, and that is why they were invited on Sunday evening to the second Silicon Summit in New York, an event organized by MSNBC, the leading American news website.

In addition to Bezos and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Young, who also participated in the first summit held at the same place exactly one year ago, this year the future of the Internet was discussed by other technology moguls from companies such as Microsoft, Gateway, AOL and some large investment groups. . In the two hours of conversation, they touched on more or less everything that has to do with working on the Net and is of interest to a wider audience, such as the issue of privacy and Napster, and especially the dramatic collapse of the so-called dotcom companies.

SONOVRAT NASDAQ: The latter colored the atmosphere of the entire meeting, drastically different from that of the first summit. Last year, at the time of the summit, the Nasdaq index, which tracks companies from the world of new technologies and communications, reached its peak, i.e. a value above five thousand. On Monday, the day after the summit, the Nasdaq fell to its lowest level since 1998, below the psychological mark of two thousand. Many young billionaires became millionaires that way, while recent millionaires are forced to write their business resumes and send them everywhere in the hope that someone will hire them. "I didn't plan to work after XNUMX," commented one young expert in the IT industry, who, as things stand, will still have to complete his full service until retirement.

"Too many people got so caught up in the excitement and promise that the Internet offered that they lost touch with reality," Ted Waite, Gateway's president, commented last year.

He and the other participants in the discussion agreed that the value of Internet companies was significantly overestimated a year ago, but everyone believes that it is very undervalued today, with the comment that the work environment is much healthier today than it was a year ago.

Although it is ungrateful to make such comparisons, there are many similarities between investing in Internet stocks on the stock market and the pyramid "savings" that we have experienced. According to Nancy Peretsman, executive vice president of the investment firm Allen & Co., many have invested with the expectation that they will make money from those who invest after them or expecting that a larger firm will buy them out and thus justify investment expectations. The money invested by investors went instead to real development to attract new money (investors), and at one point it was no longer possible to satisfy such an appetite.

On the other hand, some of the players, like Bezos, warned investors even in the age of greatest frenzy not to invest in their shares if they were worried about their money. This particularly applied to those who perceive the stock market as a kind of casino and who could rather be called stock speculators than investors, and who invest money in the short term, so much so that the shares rise a little in order to sell them at a higher price. In such a trade, there is no place for serious economic analysis, but it is played from the stomach, and these things can easily go wrong. In his appearance at the summit, Jeff Bezos showed some sympathy for the aforementioned "daz traders" (day traders), encouraging long-term investors that Amazon is the right place for their money. However, when asked directly by the presenter if he could promise that Amazon shareholders would be able to hope for the first profit by this time next year, Bezos answered extremely reservedly: "We'll see." I can't promise you anything, but we hope so."

INTERNET SLAVES: Unlike Bezos and Yang, Sony chairman Howard Stringer was in the mood for jokes and gags. Commenting on the uncontrolled exchange of music files on the Internet, he said that it is technologically feasible to create a virus that would be installed in all computers that have pirated Sony releases, and that would force the owner to listen to the American version of turbo folk for four hours. "But joking aside, we need to take more care about file encryption and digital rights," he added.

When asked by the audience why Sony produces devices that make it easy to download files from the Internet, Stringer replied that it is not about hypocrisy, but about the company's need to defend with one hand and attack with the other, if it wants to survive in this cruel business. "We're just keeping our ban," Stringer concluded.

Occasional exhilaration was interrupted by intrusions from the audience, especially Bill Lessard, a former employee of one of the failed "dotcom" companies, who today edits the site. netslaves.with (internet slaves), who told several characteristic stories about people who worked hard for several years only to end up without a job or property. "They are all unemployed now, and they all feel like they were victims of a big Ponzi scheme," he said, referring to the pyramid scheme.

If the first summit a year ago radiated unlimited optimism, it could be said that it did not lack optimism for the second one, but it was much more moderate. Seizing the opportunity, managers of large companies from the world of new technologies announced better days and an imminent rise in shares on the stock market.

The first days after the summit, however, do not herald such a quick recovery. All manufacturers of computer equipment, with Intel and Cisco in the lead, announce bad results in the third quarter of the previous year, which is just coming to the reckoning. In order to prevent a bigger crisis, Cisco will lay off ten percent of the employees in its factories around the world. The crisis in the IT industry has drastically affected the volume of ordering new equipment, which will lead to a new drop in production and further layoffs, so now everyone is staring at the new American administration and the measures it intends to take if this tendency is not to be reversed stopped.

One thing is certain. Those times and those money from a year ago will not be repeated. At least not until the next summit.