From the inception of the internet era, the top companies the world have been brick and mortar companies in various industries from the mining industry to the real estate industry. However, this changed after the invention of the internet. Now among the largest companies in the world are internet companies which lead in inventory, revenue generated, and the number of employees.
A dot com is a company that does most of its business on the internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top level domain. It embraces the Internet as the key component in its business. Dotcoms are named after the .com at the end of their website URLs. The successful dotcoms of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s had a few things in common: they all vowed to “change the world”, had crazy-high valuations, and were wildly unprofitable.
It all started by Jay Walker, an entrepreneur with a clever solution to a real problem: every day, 500,000 airline seats were going unsold. Priceline offered these seats to online customers who could name the price they were willing to pay. Consumers got cheaper flights, airlines sold excess inventory, inefficiencies were ironed out of the market, and Priceline took a cut for facilitating the process.
The dotcoms or tech companies took the world by storm in the late 1990s, with valuations rising faster compared to any other industry in recent memory. Despite the fact that most Internet companies had limited physical assets, many were given huge valuations on the stock markets.
Here is the list of the top dotcom companies of the year:
- AMAZON: Started as an online bookseller in 1995, Nasdaq listed Amazon is now the largest US internet based retailer of a wide range of products. In 2019, it reported $280.52 billion in revenue. It had a market cap of $1.38 trillion. Today 9 out of 10 consumers price check a product on Amazon. 2% of Echo owners have purchased a product via Alexa. Amazon sells more than 12 million products in which there are 1.1 million home improvement products. 95 million people have Amazon Prime memberships and $1.4K is the average spent by Amazon Prime members each year. FBA gives sellers a 30-50% increase in sales. The company shipped over almost 5 billion items worldwide in 2017. More than 50% of all Amazon sales come from third-party sellers. 80% of sellers also sell on other platforms outside of Amazon.
- FACEBOOK: Started from Harvard dormitory room, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook on Feb 4, 2004. Facebook is now the world’s most popular social networking site. In Oct, 2014, it acquired Whatsapp for a handsome amount of $19 billion. Facebook reported a total revenue of $70.7 billion in 2019. It has a market cap of $647.15 currently. With over 2.7 billion monthly active users, the company has a 12 percent increase in Facebook MAUs year-over-year. Today, Facebook owns a chain of subsidaries- Instagram, Whatsapp, Oculus VR, Onavo, Beluga and others. Facebook currently has 52,534 employees; an increase of 32% year-over-year.
- ALIBABA: Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group made headlines in 2014 its IPO (initial public offering) became world’s largest IPO ever. Alibaba, the Chinese dotcom company is NYSE listed and has a increased its market capital from $56.15 billion to a whopping amount of $581.20 billion. The Chinese tech giant currently has 755 million users and 1,17,600 employees. The company also owns Taobao, TMall, Freshippi, Lazada, Ali Express, 1688, Alibaba.com, Alimama, Alibaba Cloud and several others.
- GOOGLE: The Internet search giant is the world leader in search, contextual advertising, and other online offerings. NASDAQ‑listed Google had a market capital of $161.86 billion. Currently the valuation of the company is $964.51 billion. The number of Google users worldwide is nearly four billion and nearly 118,899 employees currently. YouTube, Google.org, Firebase, Apigee, Google AI, ITA Software, Jigsaw and other companies are owned by Google.
- NETFLIX: Netflix is an entertainment company that provides video streaming services. It has a network of over 167 million members across more than 190 countries. Within a year, its market capital ascended from $20.16 billion to $200.68 billion. Netflix Luxembourg S.a r.l., Netflix Streaming Services, Inc. Netflix Entretenimento Brasil Ltda. Are the three significant subsidiaries of the company. Netflix now has over 182 million subscribers worldwide.
- MICROSOFT: Bill Gates’ owned company Microsoft, founded in 1975, is a technology company. Their products include operating systems for computing devices, servers, phones, and other intelligent devices; server applications for distributed computing environments; cross-device productivity applications; business solution applications; desktop and server management tools; software development tools; video games; and online advertising. They also design and sell hardware including PCs, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, phones, other intelligent devices, and related accessories. Microsoft market capital, as of now, is $1000B. Currently, Microsoft has 75 million users and 1,56,439 employees work for the company. It has a chain of subsidiaries, namely- GitHub, Yammer, LinkedIn, Cyber X, Flipgrid, Skype, Xbox and others.
The statistic depicts the market value of the largest dotcom companies worldwide as of June 2019. That year, e-commerce company Amazon’s market value was 888 billion U.S. dollars. Alphabet, the parent company of search market leader Google, had a market value of 741 billion U.S. dollars.