SiliconBeat

In a quiet, ignoble manner, the final chapter of the dot-com bubble came to a close this week. What, you didn’t hear the book closing? Join the club. I almost missed it myself.

On Tuesday, the central legal case that sought to assign blame for that era’s excess fizzled to an end. A handful of large banks put their second-most recent scandal behind them when they agreed to settle claims of rigging the IPO market for $586 million. They’re still trying to put last year’s little financial hiccup behind them.

That nine-figure sum only sounds like a lot of money because you probably work for a living. (That is, if you’re among the fortune 90 percent in Silicon Valley.) In fact, the legal firm that brought the class action suit against 309 start-ups and 55 underwriters at one point were asking for $12.5 billion.

The settlement provides a muddled, un-satisfying conclusion to an era. We wanted clarity. We wanted answers. We wanted someone to blame. Instead, we have fog. And the people we wanted to tar as the bad guys, turns out they were just scapegoats. Maybe. Or maybe not. Either way, take hear that the unfairly accused seem to have bounced back. Read the rest of this entry »