The late 1990s witnessed an unprecedented surge in internet-based businesses, a period often referred to as the dot-com boom. This era, marked by rapid technological advancements and speculative investment, led to the creation of numerous online companies and fundamentally transformed retail and commerce. Companies like Amazon and eBay emerged during this time, reshaping how people shop and conduct business.
The ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet, officially ceased operations in 1990, marking the end of an era that had significantly shaped the development of digital communication. This momentous event didn't just close a chapter on early network technology; it paved the way for the emergence of the global Internet as we know it today.
On a quiet Sunday afternoon in February 2008, millions of internet users around the world suddenly found themselves unable to access YouTube. It wasn’t a typical outage caused by technical glitches or server overloads. Instead, this disruption was the result of a controversial government decision in Pakistan that inadvertently created a global internet blackout. The event became a striking example of how actions taken in one country can have far-reaching consequences across the entire internet.
In the spring of 1997, the internet was still something of a digital frontier, rapidly expanding and connecting more people every day. But on April 25, a single mistake by a small Florida-based ISP (Internet Service Provider) triggered an event that showed just how fragile this burgeoning network truly was. Known as the AS7007 Incident, this event became one of the most infamous outages in the history of the internet, offering a stark lesson on the vulnerabilities inherent in the system that underpins global web traffic.
In the mid-90s, Microsoft was riding high. Windows 95 was about to launch, and the company was cementing its place as a tech giant. But not everything Microsoft touched turned to gold. One of its most obscure and ultimately doomed projects was something called Microsoft Bob—a user interface designed to make computers more accessible by turning them into a sort of virtual home.
Web 1.0 Dial-up internet Mosaic browser Netscape Navigator Internet Explorer Geocities Angelfire AOL Yahoo directory AltaVista Web rings HTML 1.0 Gopher protocol Usenet Bulletin board systems (BBS) The Well ARPANET Tim Berners-Lee World Wide Web Dot-com bubble HTTP Hypertext GIFs Web directories Web counters Guestbooks Animated cursors JavaScript 1.0 Perl scripting CGI scripts Early blogs ICQ IRC Web portals Netscape IPO Slashdot The WELL Yahoo Mail Hotmail Tripod Web forums W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Lynx browser Web safe colors Flash animations Pop-up ads Online guestbooks Banner ads RealPlayer Winamp MP3 sharing Napster Kazaa P2P file sharing E-mail newsletters Dot-com startups Web crawlers Internet Relay Chat Netscape Communicator Web server logs Xanga MySpace HTTP 404 error HTML frames Hit counters Static web pages Webzines Webmasters ZDNet Ask Jeeves Excite Lycos The Dancing Baby The Hamster Dance All Your Base meme ASCII art Webcomic pioneers Neopets Homestar Runner Browser wars Slashdot effect Netscape vs. Microsoft Dot-com crashes PHP 3 Apache server FrontPage Dreamweaver WYSIWYG editors Web development tools Open Directory Project (DMOZ) Shockwave Web standards AltaVista Babel Fish Throbbing 3D logos .com domain rush Webcams Internet Explorer 6 Y2K bug Internet Archive Wayback Machine