What the World’s Biggest Websites Looked Like at Launch

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Since the rise of the Internet in the ’90s, the web has shown no signs of slowing down. We’ve watched the birth and evolution of social media, e-commerce and online video entertainment. It’s hard to imagine that the treasured websites we all use today were at one point just scribbles on a piece of paper, or the brainchild of a 19-year-old college student. With the help of the Wayback Machine, which provides screenshots of any website imaginable from its inception until now, we’re can view the original designs and content of the most visited websites in the U.S.
 
I only web site of those that I actually saw back in the day in its original form was Yahoo (internet access in grade school FTW). I have had my Yahoo email address for over 11 years now and I still have the same one.
 
God, that made me feel old at 31 years of age. Lol.

I remember practically almost all of those websites. Now it's all flashy, Javascript-heavy, HTML4 (& soon HTML5)-laden websites. It's actually funny that when I read a comment on another forum/blog site a few days ago where one person complained that a major company's website redesign was too "busy" or "crowded." He wanted something simpler; or light on the Flash and dynamic HTML.

If they wanted simpler looking websites when it was mostly GIF and heavily compressed JPG images, HTML, and tons of tables and text, they should look at how websites were in the beginning. :D

I don't think it's going to change to simpler looking websites as the internet has become more multimedia-centric and trying to push as much information as possible in front of a person on a single screen.

It could be worse: Major websites could have looked like the dearth of Geocities Community pages with the animated GIF backgrounds, psychedelic colors, and black-colored (or even neon colored) websites.

*shudder*
 
I remember the first time hearing about google... I thought: "no way anyone would take a name like that seriously..." haha, guess I was wrong ;)
 
You know what I miss? The time before marketing douchebags got involved and came up with the idea that you should have to register on every website in order to use it. Most of the time now if I go to a website and it requires registration I just close the tab...
 
Wow. I looked at the youtube and facebook and thought: "That's way better than what it looks like now..."
 
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