The party is over for many dot-coms

quot;Frankly, my view is the Internet industry, the craze around the Internet, ultimately caused unhealthy behaviour,quot; Schrock says, his eyes red-rimmed from a long week of strategy reviews. quot;That behaviour was: Focus on acquiring an audience at all costs, regardless of costs.quot;8217;

The list of troubled businesses is long: Value America, DrKoop.com, KBKids.com, Quepasa.com, Petplace.com, Petstore.com, CarOrder.com, Salon.com, TurboLinux. Even Amazon.com 8211; viewed as one of the most stable Web companies 8211; is cutting the fat.

quot;The first phase of the Internet, characterized by little more than exuberance and an uncertainty about what the industry was going to look like, is coming to an end,quot; says John Challenger, Chief executive of Chicago-based job-placement company Challenger, Gray and Christmas.