Remember the online grocer, Webvan, who went out of business in early 2002? How about DrKoop.com who went under in late 2001? Well, with their quarterly filings a mere 3 years late, the SEC has finally suspended them from trading.

The news that the SEC had only now caught up with two of the dot-com era's more spectacular flameouts elicited mainly wisecracks and snickers in Silicon Valley.

"DrKoop--I thought the good doctor was euthanized years ago," said Paul Saffo, a fellow at the Institute for the Future, a research group in Menlo Park, Calif.

Actually, both Webvan and DrKoop.com do still exist, if only as placeholders for subsequent companies that might seek a quick way to go public on the cheap. [...]

Neither Webvan nor DrKoop.com would be very expensive if a buyer were shopping. Shares in Webvan, which topped out at $34 the day the company went public in November 1999, were worth two one-hundredths of a penny at Wednesday's close, on a volume of 165 shares.

DrKoop, which reached $32.65 a share a month after coming to market in June 1999, ended trading unchanged Wednesday, trading at nine one-hundredths of a penny, with 1,300 shares changing hands.