The Internet Business 100

By Sarah L. Roberts-Witt, PC Magazine

February 13, 2001

Talk about whiplash. Until last March, it seems you couldn't pick up a magazine or newspaper without seeing yet another story of some amazing dot-com success and the obligatory high life of the dot-com billionaires it created. And then, just as suddenly, everybody was reveling in telling tales as one after another high-profile dot-com e-departed. All of this may have sold magazines, but it obscured the bigger picture.

Even as a pall hangs over the Net, many companies are actually improving their sites, upgrading technological capabilities and adding attractive features to lure more visitors. In the past year, big players such as Wal-Mart and Kmart have unveiled complete, splashy Phase 2s of their sites -- and had a decent Christmas, relatively speaking. And even some of the smaller Web sites in our Top 100 list are not shying away from making their Internet presence stand out even more. Now it's your turn.

To provide some inspiration, we've put together a table of 100 top Internet infrastructure companies, which you can choose from to purchase the latest Web technology tools and services. We determined which categories of Web-site-oriented products and services might have the most impact in 2001, and which of those are bona fide leaders in terms of market share, technological ingenuity, or both. You'll note, too, that some companies play an important role in more than one infrastructure category. The result is something we hope will serve not only as a guide to the bleeding-edge companies in the field but also as an indicator of trends certain to affect the features and the underpinning of your site in the coming months.

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