The sky is falling over San Francisco and I couldn't be more thrilled. This may sound odd coming from someone who works in the Internet world, but if you'd seen some of amazingly naive and frankly stupid business plans I've read over the last few years, you'd understand. Since about 1996, any One with an MBA and a map to Venture Capital rich Sand Hill Road could score a few million bucks to start up badidea.com or . One notorious example that has all of us laughing at the VC crowd is a place called Pixelon, whose founder spent 14 million dollars -- 75% of their total cash -- on a party in Las Vegas.

Those of us who did not become Millionaires over the last few years watched with both horror and envy. We can come up with bad ideas too, we complained. We can at least organize a great party with VC money. And yet we were too realistic--or too timid--to become charlatans ourselves. To be sure, the large percentage of failed companies were run by well-intentioned folks. Greed, of course, had nothing to do with it.

To profess surprise at the rash of failed companies would be silly. Few of these companies even bothered to promise they'd be profitable in the near future. Well, Guess what? Internet companies are governed by the same laws of economics that their so-called bricks and mortar competitors have to follow.

So in this sense, the gold rush is over. Back 150 years ago most speculators made money not by pulling gold or silver from the ground, but by selling the promise of getting rich. Who cared if there was substance or tangible products. Well now, belatedly, Wall Street apparently cares.

So this summer marks the next phase of the internet's development. More sane and stable. Workers will judge companies based more on their ideas than their ability to get rich. They'll stop changing jobs every 6 months... and seek stability instead .

What does this mean for the average web surfer.... well, less choice for one. You'll no longer have to distinguish between 42 pet stores online. And you'll see more of the companies you've heard of surviving and more no-name dot coms holding fire sales. And you'll probably have a harder time flipping those dot com shares... me, I'm just hoping renting in San Francisco becomes more affordable after the former dot com millionaires pack up their carpet bags and hit the road.