Now valuations are rising again and some of the dotcoms are making real profits, but the business world has become much more cautious about the internet's potential.
For now, valuations, like those for many start-ups, are based on the hope that attention will be converted to revenue at some future date.
Even when currencies float against each other, as the euro and dollar do now, valuations are extraordinarily sensitive matters, as the French anxiety in the piece quoted above indicates.
My group started looking at their screens and what we saw was higher quality companies with better valuations than in the U.S. Now, that valuation discrepancy has converged a bit.
Now suppose valuation multiples rise again in the coming years.
Now that valuation number has jumped to $10 billion thanks to an offer from some new investors, sources tell The Wall Street Journal.
In a free market (unlike what we have now), stock valuations move in waves, alternating from undervaluation to fair valuation to overvaluation, and back again.
Up until now, ecommerce valuations have been relatively reasonable compared to social media valuations.
Until now, those valuations have been buried deep in the footnotes of annual reports, with no quarterly update required.
Right now, stock valuations are above historical averages, but well below the stratospheric highs they have reached in bubbles, he said.
