• , Monday, May 3, 2004 12 AM

As far as John Doerr is concerned, the Internet frenzy of the late 1990's was not a bubble. No, to Mr. Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, it was the "Great American Boom." In 1999, Mr. Doerr, on behalf of his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, invested $12.5 million for a stake in Google that will probably be worth at least $3 billion - perhaps more - after Google sells stock to public investors this year. That is a gain of 240 times the original investment in five years and provides plenty of spare profit to offset the losses from other bets investors made in the same round of venture capital fund-raising.

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