• The New York Times, Monday, March 28, 2011 12:04 PM

Why might we not be caught up in a second tech bubble? "For one, the stock market is not glutted with offerings," writes The New York Times' DealBook blog. In 1999, as it points out, there were 308 technology I.P.O.'s, making up about half of that year's offerings, according to data from Morgan Stanley. In 2010, by contrast, there were just 20 technology I.P.O.'s, based on Thomson Reuters data.

"More important, the tech start-ups that have attracted so much interest from investors have real businesses -- not just eyeballs and clicks," DealBook writes. "Companies like Facebook have fast-growing revenue. Groupon, which has been profitable since June 2009, is on track to take in billions in revenue this year." Since 1999, meanwhile, when 248 million people were online (less than 5% of the world's population), broadband Internet and personal computing have become mainstream. Today, about one in three people are online, or roughly 2 billion users, according to data from Internet World Stats.

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