Business Events

1912 Oct 17 Minneapolis Vigilance Committee formed
Minneapolis is the first to respond to the Printer's Ink call to form a Vigilance Committee (which in 1916 changes its name to Better Business Bureau).
1984 Feb First TED Conference Held
TED was founded by Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks in 1984, and has been held annually since 1990. Wurman left after the 2002 conference; the event is now hosted by Chris Anderson and...
1995 GeoCities is Founded as Beverly Hills Internet (BHI)
Beverly Hills Internet opened today four additional virtual communities based on real-world locations, raising to 10 the number of interactive "GeoCities"(R) BHI has established in the pa...
1996 Nov eToys is Founded
We are the leading Web-based retailer focused exclusively on children's products, including toys, video games, software, videos and music. We currently offer an extensive selection of com...
1998 Boo.com is Founded
Boo.com was a British Internet company founded by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin that famously went bust following the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. After se...
1998 Flooz.com is Founded
Flooz.com was a dot-com venture, now defunct, based in New York City that went online in February 1999, promoted by comic actress Whoopi Goldberg in a series of television advertisements....
1998 Go.com is Founded
Go.com (also known as The Go Network) is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The port...
1998 Kozmo.com is Founded
Kozmo.com was a venture-capital-driven online company that promised free one-hour delivery of anything from DVD rentals to Starbucks coffee in the United States. It was founded by young i...
1998 Pets.com is Founded
Another important dot-com lesson was that advertising, no matter how clever, cannot save you. Take online pet-supply store Pets.com. Its talking sock puppet mascot became so popular that ...
1999 Gov.Works.com is Founded
Last but certainly not least, the story of GovWorks.com was good enough to become the documentary Startup.com, which chronicles its brief life. Envisioned as a Web site for citizens to do...
1999 Kibu.com is Founded
Unlike the other flops listed here, Kibu.com, an online community for teenage girls, didn't wait till the very end to wave the white flag. In fact, at the time of its October 2000 closi...
1999 MVP.com is Founded
Like Planet Hollywood and Flooz.com, MVP.com proved that celebrity endorsements are worth nothing in the long run. Backed by sports greats John Elway, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky a...
1999 Webvan is Founded
A core lesson from the dot-com boom is that even if you have a good idea, it's best not to grow too fast too soon. But online grocer Webvan was the poster child for doing just that, makin...
2000 Mar 10 Dot-com Bubble Reaches Peak
Over 1999 and early 2000, the Federal Reserve had increased interest rates six times, and the economy was beginning to lose speed. The dot-com bubble burst, numerically, on March 10, 2000...
2003 Oct AOL Time Warner Drops "AOL" From Name in Wake of Dot-Com Bubble Burst
In 2000, a new company called AOL Time Warner, with Steve Case as chairman, was created when AOL purchased Time Warner for US$164 bn. The deal, announced on 10 January 2000 and officially...
2009 Aug 31 Walt Disney Company Buys Marvel Entertainment for Around $4 Billion
The Walt Disney Company announced on Monday, August 31, 2009, that it would buy Marvel Entertainment, aka Marvel Comics. The deal we’re told, is worth about 4 billion dollars. Marvel shar...
2009 Oct 26 Yahoo, Inc. Closes Once-Iconic GeoCities Website
We always imagined how this might end: GeoCities would finally take down all of the animated "under construction" signs, and we'd hear one last Midi file to the tune of horns playing taps...
2010 Feb 2 British Confection Giant Cadbury Is Taken Over By Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods (KFT.N) sealed a friendly deal to buy British candy maker Cadbury CBRY.L for about $19.6 billion (11.9 billion pounds) after frantic last-minute talks broke an impasse over pr...
2010 Oct 20 Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse Magazine, Dies
Bob Guccione, who founded Penthouse magazine in the 1960s and built a pornographic media empire that broke taboos, outraged the guardians of taste and made billions before drowning in a s...
2011 Feb 16 Borders Group Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Borders Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 16. DJM, a New York-based firm, is tasked with disposing all remaining Borders locations. Repre...
2011 Aug 15 Google Buys Motorola Mobility
Yesterday (Aug. 15th), Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG) announced that it was acquiring Droid smartphone manufacturer Motorola Motility (NYSE: MMI) for $12.5 billion in cash, or $40 per share. The...
2011 Aug 31 Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit to Block AT&T Buyout of T-Mobile USA
The agency filed a civil antitrust lawsuit Wednesday morning in federal court in Washington that would prevent AT&T, which has the second most subscribers in the country, from acquiring f...
2011 Nov 4 Groupon Offers IPO; Highest Valued Tech Company Since Google
Groupon's initial public offering is on at $20 per share, to give the Chicago daily deals site a valuation of $12.7 billion. That's the highest tech valuation since Google went public ...