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by cyberax 59 days ago
Cisco is doing great. Sun got acquired by Oracle. Oracle itself is also fine (apart from it is Oracle). Akamai is doing fine.

From the pure software side, Macromedia got acquired. RedHat was doing fine before IBM gobbled it up. But I honestly can't remember any other "picks and shovels" software companies from pre-dotcom.
4 comments
bryanlarsen 59 days ago
> Cisco is doing great.

https://totalrealreturns.com/s/CSCO

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jeffbee 59 days ago
The glass-in-the-ground people went spectacularly broke. I also suggest you look up the stock price chart for JDSU. On the software side, Ariba and Commerce One.
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cyberax 59 days ago
Yeah, hardware companies got hit hard. But dotcom also coincided with the de-industrialization era, with manufacturing moving out of the US, with a double whammy of commodization. So it's hard to disentangle the causes.

And then I can't really remember many Internet-focused software pick&shovels companies from that era. I was only starting my professional career at that time, though.

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fragmede 59 days ago
Qwest
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shellwizard 59 days ago
3Com / US Robotics - dead

Nortel - dead

Global crossing - dead

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warkdarrior 59 days ago
Microsoft - doing fine

Netscape - dead (server) and/or dying (Mozilla)

Intel - almost dead

Palm - dead

Qualcomm - still around

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nerdsniper 59 days ago
INTC shot up >300% in the past 8 months and is now at its highest stock price ever, fwiw.
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cyberax 59 days ago
I guess Netscape counts. Palm produced devices, so it was not really picks&shovels.

Who else? Borland quietly withered away, but it had never been focused on tools specifically for the Internet.

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