Commerce One, Inc. operated online auctions focused on

B2B e-commerce B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. In ...

. At the peak of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

, the company had a

market capitalization Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...

of $21.5 billion. The company's technologies included Schema for Object-Oriented XML (SOX), an

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constrai ...

technology that influenced the development of the

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constrai ...

language and the

Java Architecture for XML Binding Jakarta XML Binding (JAXB; formerly Java Architecture for XML Binding) is a software framework that allows Java EE developers to map Java classes to XML representations. JAXB provides two main features: the ability to ''marshal'' Java objects int ...

(JAXB).

History

The company was founded in 1994 as DistriVision by Tom Gonzales and his son, Thomas Gonzales Jr. It was renamed Commerce One in 1997 after Mark Hoffman became CEO. In January 1999, the company acquired Veo Systems from Asim Abdullah for $300 million. In November 1999, the company acquired CommerceBid from Ramesh Balwani for $4.5 million in cash and 785,000 shares and the company partnered with

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

to create an

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

. In July 1999, on its first trading day after its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

, the company's stock price rose 190%. In September 2000, the company acquired AppNet for $1.6 billion in stock. In December 2000, the company formed Covisint with

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz Group AG (formerly Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler, and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive company headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufacturers. Daimler-B ...

Renault Renault S.A., commonly referred to as Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English), is a French Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company curr ...

, and

Nissan is a Japanese multinational Automotive industry, automobile manufacturer headquartered in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. The company sells its vehicles under the ''Nissan'' and ''Infiniti'' brands, and formerly the ''Datsun'' brand, with in-house ...

. Ford and General Motors each received 14.4 million shares of Commerce One and Commerce One owned 2% of Covisint. In 2001, co-founder Thomas Gonzales Jr. died of a rare cancer at age 35 and left his stake in the company in a trust to help the needy. His father was later accused of mismanaging trust funds. The accusation was never proven. In October 2002, the company announced that it planned to lay off 400 employees, 36% of its staff. The company filed

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the deb ...

on October 6, 2004 and emerged from bankruptcy two months later. In December 2004, a portion of the company's patent portfolio was sold to JGR Acquisitions, a subsidiary of

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

, for $15.5 million and the remainder of the company was sold to ComVest Partners for $4.1 million. In February 2006, the company was acquired by Perfect Commerce. In July 2017, Proactis acquired Perfect Commerce for $132.5 million.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1994 establishments in California 1999 initial public offerings 2006 mergers and acquisitions Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004 Defunct online companies of the United States Dot-com bubble