Web 1.0: Rest in Peace
In the past millennium, the network was filled with static websites with annoying GIFs optimized for Windows 95 and modems at 33.6k. At that time, AJAX technologies were not used, there were no profiles, blogs, or even a simple opportunity to leave a comment. The Internet was completely devoid of interactivity, and the sites could only be viewed.
Now - after as many as 61352 hours - it is even difficult to imagine that we do on the Internet without constantly updating our profiles, downloading new Prison Break series, adding photos to Flickr , downloading songs from iTunes to our iPods and reading Google News .
Let's look back and see what happened to the successful sites of the time. Is it alive at least part of the old Internet or the heroes of the past have become a meaningless addition to the modern network?
In 1995, Hotmail was launched - the first site where you could receive a free email address that was not tied to an Internet provider.
')
For many Internet newbies, Hotmail was probably the first resource to use email communication features. In four years, about 30 million people worldwide exchanged @hotmail addresses. At a certain stage, it was believed that Hotmail was the only way for people who were hopelessly distant from a computer to use e-mail.
In 1998, Microsoft bought Hotmail for $ 400 million and it was a serious deal by the standards of the Internet, while free from the fever of the following years.
Now, in 2007, the end of Hotmail is already close, and although the @hotmail addresses are not lost anywhere, the Live Mail service, which is part of the Microsoft Live family, will be replaced.
HoTMail.com, December 1996
The Geocities service was the most popular place where you could have your own homepage for free.
In 1997, the Geocities website ranked fifth in terms of attendance; it had more than 500,000 home pages. Two years later, Yahoo bought Geocities for $ 3.57 billion and began to actively saturate the pages placed there with various kinds of advertising, which was tantamount to signing a death sentence. With the fall in prices for "real" hosting, the need for such home pages has practically disappeared. Now accounts at Geocities are used either to store hopelessly outdated information or to download and download pirated mp3 files.
Geocities.com 1997
The Altavista search engine is Google of the past millennium. The first worthwhile attempt to index a worldwide network. The popularity of Altavista was based on the fact that it was one of the few search engines that actually produced good results.
But at the same time Altavista always had problems with spam in search results. The number of spammer sites has grown exponentially, and in the meantime, a company called Google has found a more effective way to rank pages and thus reduce the impact of spam.
After people tried Google, their departure from Altavista was practically resolved. The share of Altavista among the search engines decreased to microscopic values ​​and most of the visitors were people moving on the old bookmarks. Altavista, if it tried, was never able to return to the game. At the moment, the proud owner of this antique is Yahoo!
Altavista in 1997 .
ICQ - in the youth version of “I seek you” (I seek you) - appeared in 1996. It was an easy-to-use instant messaging program, with which you could create friends lists and see whether they were connected to the Internet or not. Nothing special by modern standards, but then it was something of a revolution. ICQ has become a program that everybody installed.
In June 1998, AOL bought ICQ for a fabulous $ 287 million, with the subsequent payment of an additional 120 million over three years, depending on the results shown.
What happened? Over time, the program has acquired many additional functions, has become cumbersome and has lost its simplicity. With the growing influence of AOL IM , Yahoo IM and MSN instant messengers, friends disappeared from the ICQ lists. In the end, this led to a significant decrease in popularity.
ICQ.com, 1998
Now about Netscape speak only well-worn buttons "optimized for viewing in Netscape", located on ancient sites. The share of the browser market, which in 1998 was more than 50%, currently does not exceed 1%.
Why? Netscape has been the victim of Microsoft's unfair reprisals against its competitors. But, by and large, there is no one to blame for the lack of new ideas and the inability to keep their users, Netscape, except themselves. The Netscape browser, so good at the start, became slow, buggy, and eventually began to display pages even worse than Internet Explorer.
In the battle for survival from Netscape, there was only a boring and mediocre web portal, which just had to disappear into oblivion in order to fully go to the pages of historical books.
Netscape.com, 1997
Audio streaming standard since 1995. The first audio streams were transmitted over the Internet in RealPlayer format. These were the times of WAV files and 33.6k slow modems: not the right combination. Real has offered a solution using its applications. This is how direct audio broadcasts via the Internet were born.
What did not work out? Over time, the RealPlayer format and the player itself became out of date due to the appearance of mp3 files, with modest size and the ability to save to a computer, and also because of the omnipresent Windows Media Player, which was installed by default on all Windows computers. Yes, this story is reminiscent of the opposition of Netscape and Internet Explorer. In addition, the free Realplayer player has become too intrusive, offering to buy a Pro version every ten minutes.
Real.com, 1998
The Internet has not always been so open. In the past millennium, there was only one company from which it was possible to buy domains in .com, .net or .org zones.
For some $ 100 for at least two years, you could get your own domain name. These were times when you still had the chance to calmly register a normal word as a domain name in the .com zone.
This continued until 2000, when Network Solutions lost its monopoly and domain prices fell by 95%.
The development of Network Solutions has since ceased, and the company itself has become only one of thousands of domain registrars.
Network Solutions, 1998
If you think that this review is missing information about some really important sites - write to me, maybe I will find an opportunity to supplement this entry with useful information.
Now - after as many as 61352 hours - it is even difficult to imagine that we do on the Internet without constantly updating our profiles, downloading new Prison Break series, adding photos to Flickr , downloading songs from iTunes to our iPods and reading Google News .
Let's look back and see what happened to the successful sites of the time. Is it alive at least part of the old Internet or the heroes of the past have become a meaningless addition to the modern network?
In 1995, Hotmail was launched - the first site where you could receive a free email address that was not tied to an Internet provider.
')
For many Internet newbies, Hotmail was probably the first resource to use email communication features. In four years, about 30 million people worldwide exchanged @hotmail addresses. At a certain stage, it was believed that Hotmail was the only way for people who were hopelessly distant from a computer to use e-mail.
In 1998, Microsoft bought Hotmail for $ 400 million and it was a serious deal by the standards of the Internet, while free from the fever of the following years.
Now, in 2007, the end of Hotmail is already close, and although the @hotmail addresses are not lost anywhere, the Live Mail service, which is part of the Microsoft Live family, will be replaced.
HoTMail.com, December 1996
The Geocities service was the most popular place where you could have your own homepage for free.
In 1997, the Geocities website ranked fifth in terms of attendance; it had more than 500,000 home pages. Two years later, Yahoo bought Geocities for $ 3.57 billion and began to actively saturate the pages placed there with various kinds of advertising, which was tantamount to signing a death sentence. With the fall in prices for "real" hosting, the need for such home pages has practically disappeared. Now accounts at Geocities are used either to store hopelessly outdated information or to download and download pirated mp3 files.
Geocities.com 1997
The Altavista search engine is Google of the past millennium. The first worthwhile attempt to index a worldwide network. The popularity of Altavista was based on the fact that it was one of the few search engines that actually produced good results.
But at the same time Altavista always had problems with spam in search results. The number of spammer sites has grown exponentially, and in the meantime, a company called Google has found a more effective way to rank pages and thus reduce the impact of spam.
After people tried Google, their departure from Altavista was practically resolved. The share of Altavista among the search engines decreased to microscopic values ​​and most of the visitors were people moving on the old bookmarks. Altavista, if it tried, was never able to return to the game. At the moment, the proud owner of this antique is Yahoo!
Altavista in 1997 .
ICQ - in the youth version of “I seek you” (I seek you) - appeared in 1996. It was an easy-to-use instant messaging program, with which you could create friends lists and see whether they were connected to the Internet or not. Nothing special by modern standards, but then it was something of a revolution. ICQ has become a program that everybody installed.
In June 1998, AOL bought ICQ for a fabulous $ 287 million, with the subsequent payment of an additional 120 million over three years, depending on the results shown.
What happened? Over time, the program has acquired many additional functions, has become cumbersome and has lost its simplicity. With the growing influence of AOL IM , Yahoo IM and MSN instant messengers, friends disappeared from the ICQ lists. In the end, this led to a significant decrease in popularity.
ICQ.com, 1998
Now about Netscape speak only well-worn buttons "optimized for viewing in Netscape", located on ancient sites. The share of the browser market, which in 1998 was more than 50%, currently does not exceed 1%.
Why? Netscape has been the victim of Microsoft's unfair reprisals against its competitors. But, by and large, there is no one to blame for the lack of new ideas and the inability to keep their users, Netscape, except themselves. The Netscape browser, so good at the start, became slow, buggy, and eventually began to display pages even worse than Internet Explorer.
In the battle for survival from Netscape, there was only a boring and mediocre web portal, which just had to disappear into oblivion in order to fully go to the pages of historical books.
Netscape.com, 1997
Audio streaming standard since 1995. The first audio streams were transmitted over the Internet in RealPlayer format. These were the times of WAV files and 33.6k slow modems: not the right combination. Real has offered a solution using its applications. This is how direct audio broadcasts via the Internet were born.
What did not work out? Over time, the RealPlayer format and the player itself became out of date due to the appearance of mp3 files, with modest size and the ability to save to a computer, and also because of the omnipresent Windows Media Player, which was installed by default on all Windows computers. Yes, this story is reminiscent of the opposition of Netscape and Internet Explorer. In addition, the free Realplayer player has become too intrusive, offering to buy a Pro version every ten minutes.
Real.com, 1998
The Internet has not always been so open. In the past millennium, there was only one company from which it was possible to buy domains in .com, .net or .org zones.
For some $ 100 for at least two years, you could get your own domain name. These were times when you still had the chance to calmly register a normal word as a domain name in the .com zone.
This continued until 2000, when Network Solutions lost its monopoly and domain prices fell by 95%.
The development of Network Solutions has since ceased, and the company itself has become only one of thousands of domain registrars.
Network Solutions, 1998
If you think that this review is missing information about some really important sites - write to me, maybe I will find an opportunity to supplement this entry with useful information.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/30902/
All Articles