Before the short selling bubble burst, there was another stock market bubble that popped under the pressure of excess. The dot-com bubble made a lot of online businesses a lot of money in the late 1990s and these commercials show exactly what they were selling. Some are still going strong (Amazon, Yahoo!, eBay, Google), some died (Rent.net, Kozmo, CDNow, Flooz.com), and some are around but not in the same way (Lycos).
See also: “what is internet?” and the evolution of web design from 1990–today.