The technology industry watches closely each month to see how Microsoft, Yahoo and Google stack up in market share. Increasingly, however, the big online companies also compete over another measure: energy efficiency.

Their race to achieve the optimal “power usage effectiveness” shows just how much things have changed in data centers — the gigantic computing facilities that serve up the web mail, online storage and internet services we use every day.

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and What happened to to the dot-com IPO class of 1999-2000?  

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything about Onvia, the one-time Internet high flyer from the dot-com boom days. But news today that the 13-year-old Seattle company is out of complaince with Nasdaq rules got me thinking. What happened to Seattle’s IPO class of 1999 to 2000? The answer is not uplifting. They’re pretty much dead. Or, they’ve been consumed by larger entities.

In fact, of the 26 companies that completed IPOs in Washington state between January 1999 and December 2000 — the golden years of the Internet — only six remain as independent public companies. (Bsquare, Dendreon, drugstore.com, Expedia, F5 and Onvia).

Five companies are dead, filed for bankruptcy or completely unaccounted for — HomeGrocer.com, Freeshop.com, Metawave, ShopNow and Eden Bioscience.

Nearly half of the companies (12) have been acquired, some for a fraction of what they were worth at the time of their IPOs.  And three companies — The Cobalt Group, Onyx and WatchGuard — were taken private.

Here’s a look at the technology-related IPOs from those years in Washington state, with my notes on what happened. The list was created with the help of IPO Monitor, and includes biotech companies.

AT&T Wireless Group – (Acquired by Cingular, which later changed its name back to AT&T) 

Avenue A — (Changed its name to aQuantive and sold to Microsoft for $6 billion)

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and What now for Microsoft, Yahoo?  

AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher reports today that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz, his Yahoo counterpart, are talking about ways the companies could work together. Swisher cites some interesting possibilities, including a swap in which Microsoft would handle search advertising for both, with Yahoo focusing on display ads.

However, she cautions that the talks are "preliminary and wide-ranging," meaning that nothing has been nailed down — except for ruling out a full-blown acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft. This story has been around so long that all of us are pretty much experts at this point. So what should the companies do? Vote in our poll below, or offer additional thoughts in the comments.

What should Microsoft and Yahoo do?
( online surveys)

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Onvia warned by Nasdaq  

Onvia, one of the few publicly traded Seattle Internet companies left over from the dot-com boom, has received a letter from Nasdaq  saying it doesn’t comply with certain financial requirements of the stock exchange. In a press release today, the online marketplace for sales leads said it received a notice because it does not have a minimum stockholders’ equity of $10 million.

Onvia said it can either submit a plan to regain and sustain compliance by the end of next week or apply for listing on the NASDAQ Capital Market. That market requires minimum stockholders’ equity of $2.5 million.

The stock is now trading at $3.90, giving the company a market value of $32 million.

Founded in 1996, Onvia raised $240 million in a public offering in March 2000. The company — led by Mike Pickett — reported revenue of $21 million and a net loss of $3.4 million last year.

(Editor’s note: The post and headline have been corrected to better reflect the Nasdaq notice.)

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