A good case study I have observed in the era of dot com boom and fallouts in the year 2000. That was the time when dot coms or online companies/ websites had been seen as the best business in the history and the only way to become millionaire or billionaire in lesser than the less time. New web based companies were popping out on daily bases. Many of them were going to public offerings. Had raised millions of dollars from stock market. Spent a lot on marketing, brand promotion, state of the art infrastructure, huge returns and biggest perks. But all of them closed down in their childhood only. Some of them were quite older as well.

Very few of them got survived during that like Google. Why?

I have another question to ask. What particular things you are missing which those closed down companies were offering? Take ask jeevs or alta vista or any other. All of them did same mistake. Were focusing on all things accept their services. None of them invested enough in technology, innovation, evaluation, developments, and good staffing. They had websites but not good things to serve.

Always focus first on your customers, offerings and technologies.