Editing Silicon Valley (section)

=== Internet age ===
{{Main|Internet}}
{{see also|dot-com bubble}}
Commercial use of the Internet became practical and grew slowly throughout the early 1990s. In 1995, commercial use of the [[Internet]] grew substantially and the initial wave of internet startups, [[Amazon.com]], [[eBay]], and the predecessor to [[Craigslist]] began operations.<ref name=N1995>{{cite book |author1=W. Josephujjwal sarkar Campbell |title=1995: The Year the Future Began |date=January 2, 2015 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-27399-3 |chapter=The Year of the Internet}}</ref> Silicon Valley is generally considered to have been the center of the [[dot-com bubble]], which started in the mid-1990s and collapsed after the [[NASDAQ stock market]] began to decline dramatically in April 2000. During the bubble era, real estate prices reached unprecedented levels. For a brief time, [[Sand Hill Road]] was home to the most expensive commercial real estate in the world, and the booming economy resulted in severe [[traffic congestion]].

The [[PayPal Mafia]] is sometimes credited with inspiring the re-emergence of consumer-focused Internet companies after the [[dot-com bust]] of 2001.<ref>{{cite news |work=San Francisco Chronicle |url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/15/DDOH107DLG.DTL |date=May 16, 2008 |title=Nonfiction review: 'Once You're Lucky' |first=Marcus |last=Banks}}</ref> After the dot-com crash, Silicon Valley continues to maintain its status as one of the top research and development centers in the world. A 2006 ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'' story found that 12 of the 20 most inventive towns in America were in California, and 10 of those were in Silicon Valley.<ref>[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115352188346314087 Reed Albergotti, "The Most Inventive Towns in America"], {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171203065605/https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB115352188346314087 |date=December 3, 2017 }} ''Wall Street Journal'', July 22–23, 2006, P1.</ref> San Jose led the list with 3,867 utility patents filed in 2005, and number two was Sunnyvale, at 1,881 utility patents.<ref>''Ibid.''</ref> Silicon Valley is also home to a significant number of "[[Unicorn (finance)|Unicorn]]" ventures, referring to [[Startup company|startup companies]] whose [[Valuation (finance)|valuation]] has exceeded $1&nbsp;billion [[United States dollar|dollars]].<ref>{{cite news |title=The Unicorn List |url=http://fortune.com/unicorns/xiaomi-1/ |access-date=April 6, 2015 |magazine=Fortune |date=January 22, 2015 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150411235623/http://fortune.com/unicorns/xiaomi-1/ |archive-date=April 11, 2015}}</ref>