The Queen gets the dot-com blues

The Queen has become the latest entrepreneur to suffer from dotcom fallout, seeing value of the Internet company she invested in plummet by over half a million pounds since its peak.

In January of this year the Queen invested £100,000 of her own money in Getmapping.com, a startup which provides aerial pictures of anywhere in the UK online. The venture initially seemed a shrewd move.

The company initially brought a tidy return to the royal investment. It was valued at £870,000 on flotation and reached nearly £1m at its peak. As dotcom stocks have tumbled, however, the company's valuation has also dropped. The shares have fallen 62.5p, £175 from their peak, to be worth just £269,000.

Managing director of Getmapping.com, Tristram Cary, acknowledges that the company has also had difficulties meeting targets. He says there have been technical difficulties with building the geographical database and that bad weather has delayed the company's aerial mapping. He remains confident that things will turn around.

"It's taken longer than expected," says Cary. "My view is that when we have an accurate country-wide map, we will have an extremely attractive data set and attract a lot of sales."

Cary says Getmapping.com hopes to have built a complete database by May next year.

To have your say online click on the TalkBack button and go to the ZDNet News forum.

Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom. And read what others have said.