<p><pre><code> But there was significantly more investment in cleantech
than there was in the Internet during the last decade.
</code></pre>
While said as an aside, if true, this is incredibly significant. Even if there is an internet bubble, it's hard not to argue that very real, visible progress has been made in web technologies over the last 10 years. Whereas the price of many forms of energy has (if anything) increased in real terms.<p>A glance at the numbers suggests that the government put more taxpayer money into Solyndra type companies than it did into web startups, and that this was one of the things that drew less scrupulous venture people to the area: use the dumb money from the government for an exit.