The internet has advanced like crazy compared to what it used to be. Sometimes its fun to take a “vintage” look at the internet. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, you can do exactly that. According to Alexa, the web’s top 5 websites are:
Let’s take a look at where they started.
Yahoo
Yahoo is one of the web’s oldest web companies. Yahoo was founded in 1994, so it goes back further than the Wayback Machine even goes. It started as a human edited directory of websites and evolved into a full web portal. 1997 | 2004 | Now
Microsoft Network (MSN)
MSN is a collection of web services which was launched in coordination with Windows 95. It has since evolved to a wider range of services, and was rebranded as Windows Live in 2005. The first version of the site in Wayback was quite pathetic. 1996 | 2000 | Now
Google was later to the scene than Yahoo, not officially becoming a company until 1998. From there it grew like crazy. The homepage has always remained a model of simplicity and hasn’t really changed much. In 1998, the site consisted of nothing but 3 lines of text, linking to the prototype of the search engine. In 1999, the page started to take on the look of what it has today. By 2002, it looks quite similar to today. The logo was greyed out in the archive because Google is apparently blocking the logo from being used.
Youtube
Youtube is, today, the most popular online video site on the web. Unlike the others, its fairly young. It was launched in February 2005 and was acquired by Google in November 2006. That’s from birth to being acquired for $1.65 billion in 21 months! By this time, it closely resembles what it looks like today.
Microsoft Live
According to Alexa, Live is the fifth most popular site. But, ironically, it is what our #2 site evolved into. Live was launched in 2005, even while MSN continues to remain online. Interestingly, the live.com domain was not originally owned by Microsoft. When you look in Wayback, you see that the domain’s history goes way beyond 2005. It was owned and operated by Live Networks, a supplier of “Internet Streaming Media, Wireless, and Multicast technology”. The page remained largely static until Microsoft acquired the domain and launched Windows Live.
Have Some Fun
Go to the WayBack Machine and have some fun looking around. Have fun looking around at 90′s web design, including Times New Roman fonts, blinking text, animated images, and cheesy backgrounds.
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Pretty cool…
I wanted to check out PCMech on there but looks like you’ve blocked them in your robots.txt file…
Yes, I know. I actually need to look into that, because I don’t recall specifically trying to bar their service. I actually don’t mind at all if they archive this site.
The Yahoo! site is a blast from the past – man, THAT used to be the thing back before Google. Not sure how Google became so phenomenally popular over the course of a few years.