While a lot of money and effort may have been spent on Y2K, I would say most of it was wasted. In my case, I was responsible for Unix based communications systems support in Europe, Africa and Middle East and was roped in to sit on a special Y2K global team operating in UK, USA and Australia. I grew tired of listening to the pontificating waffle on so many conference calls and decided to "try it out". My team had radio systems at our office in the UK mimicking our customers' systems and we could configure them to replicate customers' systems anywhere to work out unexpected snags etc. So, I set up one of the systems and told it lies about the date, telling the system it was already Dec 31st 1999. Then I watched and logged the dreaded roll over to 2000. And sod all happened! I was frequently kicked (metaphorically) at various conference calls for my reports and opinions etc. One senior manager was heard boasting how he was going to "have me". When the dreaded date came around, we had parties of various managers etc sat in our offices here in the UK, Chicago, Sydney and at a customer's location in Saudi Arabia. And as midnight reached and passed each location, starting with Sydney people reported in on events, or more accurately, non-event. When midnight passed here in the UK, my bosses boss went through the corporate back slapping routine (as though he had done something!), then took me to one side and said "Well it looks as if you were right after all".
Much ado about nothing!