Yahoo! Netrospective: 10 years, 100 moments of the Web

incorporation
In a trailer on the Stanford campus, grad students Jerry Yang and David Filo keep track of their favorite web sites. News of their online directory quickly spreads. In '95 Yahoo! is incorporated and soon becomes the world's most visited web site.


minorthreat
Can a person be banned from the Net entirely? Chris Lamprecht, aka Minor Threat, becomes the first person to receive such a sentence. Forbidden from accessing any computer network, Lamprecht kicks off a sordid legacy of hacker legends.


webcelebs
"I kiss you!" exclaims the Turk who becomes the Internet's first celebrity. As folks share Mahir's giggle-inducing site, Cindy Margolis lays claim to "most downloaded woman," and web celebs Peter Pan Man and Wedding Dress Guy also create a stir.


jerrygarcia
Word of the death of musician Jerry Garcia in '95 speeds through the Internet and becomes the first news item posted to the Yahoo! home page. Online news reporting continues to spread, as The New York Times and CNN move to the Web.


craigslist
When Craig Newmark starts a local email list in '95, he doesn't know it'll grow into a hugely popular classifieds site under his name. He keeps craigslist.org noncommercial, but that doesn't stop it from becoming a leading job recruiting site.


netscape
Netscape revolutionizes web browsing with Navigator, and in '95 turns Wall St. on its head with history's third largest initial public offering. The stock jumps from $28 to $72 in a day, setting the bar for new economy IPOs based on potential, not results.


sandhillroad
It takes money to make money, and that's where venture capital firm Sequoia Capital comes in. Having previously helped Apple, Oracle, and Cisco get off the ground, Sequoia invests nearly $2 million in an upstart operation named Yahoo! in April '95.


banner
HotWired.com runs the first banner ad in '94, and web sites soon fill with the promos. An advertising study says banners are good for business, even if people don't click 'em. In Aug. '95 Yahoo! starts running ads and banner ads soon become ubiquitous.


ebay
Founded in Pierre Omidyar's living room in San Jose, CA, in '95, eBay eventually grows to become the world's largest online trading post. From fighter jets to cars to human organs, the site matches buyers with sellers of nearly any item and service.


verisign
Technophobes mistrust the Web until VeriSign arrives on the scene in '95 and comforts millions of would-bee-commerce customers. The encryption company goes public in '98 and gives shopaholics much-needed peace of mind as they spend money online.


blackthursday
For 48 hours in Feb. '96 Yahoo! starts to show its colors by turning its pages black to support Black Thursday and a web-wide protest against Internet censorship. In Oct. '01 we turn the front page pink to show support for breast cancer research.


fanfiction
Is the sole flaw in your favorite book, movie, or TV series that it follows a limited number of plots? Read or write fan fiction! The Web is full of stories placing established characters--even real celebrities--into new, sometimesR-rated situations.


global
Yahoo! goes global in '96 withY! Japan, Canada, UK and Ireland, Germany, and France. More than 20 international Yahoo! sites serve more than 160 million registered users in over 15 different languages. Come hit the road with us at world.yahoo.com.


useless
Since entering mainstream usage, the Net has been inundated with sites that can only be described as useless--including virtual bubble wrap, face-changing games, and endlessly inane trivia. Never before have so many been distracted by so much.


dancingbaby
One of the first obnoxious crazes established online was the very creepy and popular dancing baby. Its series of oddly hypnotic gyrations in a diaper piques public interest, and the baby is a crossover success--boogying from the Net onto Ally McBeal.


imdb
Started as a Usenet site for movie fans and then shaped into a huge searchable resource, the Internet Movie Database incorporates in '96. Two years later, Amazon.com acquires IMDb, which today provides info to more than 25 million film buffs monthly.


etickets
Travelocity and Expedia launch in '96, with Yahoo! Travel and Orbitz following soon after. Priceline lets users call the shots, and Ticketless Travel Online debuts. Web-only fares, smaller seats, and deplorable airline food follow.


backrub
Grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin create search engine BackRub in '96, using a dorm room as a data center. Several years and many millions later, their renamed company, Google, emerges as both a verb and a leader in online search.


directions
Bulky phone directories and hard-to-fold paper maps could go the way of the LP. In '96, Switchboard creates a yellow pages web site; Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest launch interactive map services. Soon every major web portal boasts a phone directory and maps.


personalization
My Yahoo! and Infoseek Personal news service launch in '96, and users handpick their online content--from sports scores and stock quotes to weather and entertainment info. It's just the start of increased personalization of the web experience.

webkids
The first generation to grow up on the Web logs on to Yahooligans! in spring '96. Kids soon become savvy searchers, finding everything from homework help to the yuckiest sites, as they follow their cartoon heroes off the TV screen and onto the computer.


email
Offering the first free web-based email, Hotmail launches with a fizzle in '96. But word of mouth turns fizzle to sizzle, and potential competitors take note. Free email with huge storage like Yahoo! Mail continues to provide an alternative to "snail mail."


netday
The Internet has been a huge boon for students. On the first NetDay, volunteers visit schools across the country to wire classrooms for the Web. As one of the first goodwill Net initiatives, it sparks new uses of the Web by activists and nonprofits.


ipo
Wall Street goes YHOO! Starting at $13 and closing at $33, Yahoo!'s initial public offering on April 12, 1996, is one of the Internet boom's shining stars. And unlike others with hot IPOs, Yahoo! doesn't burn out--it just keeps yodeling along.


push
Kiss your browser goodbye, and let the Web "push" info to you. PointCast's free screensaver automatically downloads news and entertainment from the Web to your PC. But it hogs bandwidth, and PointCast folds by '00. The concept lives on in RSS feeds.


bait
Yahoo! goes fishing with its first TV commercial in May '96. Showing awould-be fisherman searching the Web for bait advice, the ad introduces the "Do you, uh, Yahoo!?" tagline. It's also the debut of the yodel heard around the world.


chainemail
Email gives chain letters new life. Resist the urge to pass them along! Bill Gates will not give you $100, no one in Nigeria really needs help transferring funds, nonprofit groups do not use email to help sick kids, and the Good Times virus is a hoax.


thesmokinggun
Founded in April '97, The Smoking Gun becomes a bane to celebrities and criminals everywhere. And if you're a celebrity criminal? Forget about it! By unearthing the pics and docs celebs don't want you to see, the site gains worldwide notoriety.


deepblue
The battle of Man vs. Machine has been fought countless times in films. In '97, it becomes reality when chess champ Garry Kasparov plays IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer live online. Sadly for mankind, the computer wins, but it's a fight worth watching.


onlinephotos
Between '97 and '99, digital camera prices drop to around $300. Sites like Yahoo! Photos, Shutterfly, and Ofoto make it easy to upload and share photos on the Web. Rather than bore friends with old-fashioned prints, we now clog inboxes with online albums.


weblog
I blog, you blog, we all blog. But not in December '97, when only a handful of personal web pages with news links and commentary exist. Jorn Barger is the first to truncate "web log" to name his own Robot Wisdom Weblog. A worldwide phenomenon is born.



chat
From Clinton (first presidential) and Koko (first "interspecies") to the historic online meeting of Mahathir Mohamad, Yasser Arafat, and Fidel Ramos, web news chat makes big headlines, while Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Chat keep us talking.


trailers
Movie buffs used to rely on trailers for the scoop on new flicks. In '97, Upcomingmovies.com helps change that by tracking a film's evolution from pitch to premiere--and five years later, we integrate this cool insider site into Yahoo! Movies.


babelfish
The Web is for all people and all languages. But how do we communicate through the language barrier? In 1997, AltaVista's Babel Fish helps the monolingual by offering a fast, free, and accurate translator.


heavensgate
In '97, many feared the Net's potential for misuse. The revelation that Heaven's Gate cult earned its money designing web sites does little to ease these worries. Critics blame a web-inspired group mentality for the mass suicide of 39 cult members.


25million
Hotter than MTV, more timely than Time. In Nov. '97, Yahoo! has over 25 million U.S. users. More people use the purple-and-yellow portal than any other web site. Yahoo! even boasts a bigger audience than many cable networks and magazines combined.


daytrading
A group of stock traders dubbed Short Order Execution Strategists (SOES) hit the jackpot buying and selling securities in a 24-hour period. Legions of so-called day traders are spawned, and their fortunes rise and fall on an hourly basis.


dating
Lookin' for love in all the web places--personals go online as romantics make a match by posting pictures and profiles. While specialized sites help like-minded lovers meet, Yahoo! Personals starts hooking up countless numbers of happy couples.


drudge
Gossip is a web mainstay, and the leading purveyor is Matt Drudge. In '98, his bare-bones site announces that Newsweek has a story about President Clinton and an intern. One failed impeachment later, Drudge remains a daily bookmark for dirt junkies.


aliens
E.T. phone home on my dime! In '98, astronomers search for extraterrestrial intelligence with help from Internet users. http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ gives out free screensavers that crunch radio-telescope data. Five billion possible alien signals have been found so far.


mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes, and web sites are no exception. In '98, the Associated Press accidentally posts Bob Hope's obituary online. CNN.com has the same problem in '03. Also in '98 ABCNews.com posts a mock-up of election results before voting ends.


magazines
Ah, the Internet bubble days. A time when new web sites launched daily, and a new crop of hip Internet magazines grew as thick as phone books to cover the industry and everything and everyone connected with it.



filesharing
In its first incarnation (think Napster), peer-to-peer had a tough time in court. But new legal P2P open source tools like BitTorrent arrive, and artist-sanctioned recordings and legal media flow. Other P2P sites like FastTrack, Gnutella, and Kazaa inspire lawsuits.


odp
The Open Directory Project harnesses the collective knowledge of volunteer fanatics and garden-variety hobbyists to create the largest human-edited directory on the Web. Open Directory's emphasis on community still serves as a model for other sites.


overture
Web searches go commercial in June '98 when Overture (formerly GoTo.com) launches its innovative technology. Overture lets companies bid on words for higher placement in search results. Paid search catches on and is soon widespread.


gaming
More than a mere trend, late '90s online gaming changes everything from checkers to role-playing to violent first-person shooters. A new video card or monthly fee may be involved, but you just can't put a price tag on talking trash to an alien.


financevision
Yahoo! launches FinanceVision, a streaming web-only financial news network conceived during the stock market bubble. The idea fails as the market collapses, but this ahead-of-its-time effort serves as a glimpse of things to come.


blairwitch
The Blair Witch pseudo site turns traditional marketing on its head, as moviegoers are sure the "filmmakers'" disappearance is real. The ploy paves the way for creative online marketing, and the "mockumentary" grosses $150 million at the box office.


webcasts
Incited by a '99 TV ad, millions ogle the first major webcast--a Victoria's Secret "fashion show"--crashing Net servers. Thereafter, sites add bandwidth before live video events like Reagan's funeral, 9/11 hearings, and Carnie Wilson's gastric bypass.

shopping
As Yahoo! Shopping opens its doors and Amazon.com adds music to its wares, online buying gains momentum in time for the holidays. Despite tech glitches, powerhouse auction site eBay wins big on its IPO, as consumers flock to fill their virtual carts.


nakednews
Why expect the same old format from your online news? You won't find any anchorman stuffed shirts on Naked News--in fact, you'll find no shirts at all. With its irreverent take on current events, Naked News is an idea any newshound can love.


virus
Computer viruses once traveled by disk, but email gives them a faster ride. In '99, Melissa is the first virus to infect over 100,000 computers worldwide in just days. In '00, the LoveLetter virus causes $8.7 billion in damage.


blogging
The proliferation of blogs and built-in tensions with mainstream media come to a head with a CBS report on the president's military service. In '04, bloggers pick apart faulty reporting by Dan Rather and CBS, leading to Rathergate and a showcase for blog power.


hackers
In '99, many government agencies tackle the issue of hackers. The FBI, U.S. Senate, and White House all suffer embarrassing outages at the hands of groups like Global Hell, whose calling card leaves no doubt as to who knocked Big Brother offline.


abilene
In April '99, a technology partnership bridges Abilene to NORDUnet and SURFnet. Using high-speed links from Europe to North America, this connection creates a transatlantic Internet2 backbone network--and gives the world a truly global Internet.


fantasysports
After years of keeping their own stats, sports fans move to the Web in a big league way as Yahoo! and others roll out fantasy baseball leagues and stats services in spring '99. Stat-crazed baseball fans abandon newspaper box scores and calculators.


javascript
A site is just a site until JavaScript appears in the late '90s. Using its technology to turn text-heavy pages into dynamic and often interactive experiences, JavaScript helps the Web evolve from an info source into a full-fledged entertainment medium.


spam
By '99, junk mail is such a problem that federal legislators step in. Were they annoyed by email offers to enlarge their constituency with no money down? The emergence of Yahoo!'s spam filter and others later help ease one of the Net's deepest time-sinks.


banking
One of the first state-chartered, FDIC-insured institutions to operate only on the Web, First Internet Bank of Indiana opens its vaults in '99, marking a major milestone in online financial management. To this day, the bank owns no brick-and-mortar facility.


election
Election coverage has veered Netward since news teams first embraced the medium in '96. Blanket online coverage of the '00 mess helped us understand the inner workings of politics. In '04, candidates flock to the Web to raise money and attract support.


sex
Sex has always been one of the hottest online topics. By '02, pornography has inundated the Web and made it easy for fans to steer clear of the local video store. These days porn lurks on hard drives at work, and "ED" drugs are ordered online.


napster
At the peak of its popularity in '00, free MP3-trading site Napster is sued for copyright violation, ordered to shut down, then saved by a landmark deal with Bertelsmann. Recording and web industries continue to battle over digital music's future.


aolmerger
After serving as the training wheels for tens of millions of new web users, AOL pulls off the largest financial deal in history when it merges with Time Warner. But the deal soon becomes a cautionary tale and an MBA case study. Last year Time Warner removed the AOL from its name.


regulation
Congress keeps trying to regulate the Internet, usually in the name of protecting children. Some attempts are struck down as censorship. More successful are laws about restricting the use of kids' personal info and requiring Internet porn filters in libraries.


buzz
In '00, Yahoo! helps users stay up-to-date with the Buzz Index, which catalogues Yahoo!'s top daily searches. From king-of-all-media Howard Stern to failed celeb marriages to wardrobe malfunctions, we tell you what the world is searching for.


dotcomguy
On Jan. 1, 2000, Mitch Maddox changes his name, moves into an empty house with only a laptop, and becomes DotComGuy--the ultimate new millennium experiment. For a year the world watches his wired, well-sponsored lifestyle play out in the Dotcompound.


hotornot
Are you Hot or Not? Anticipating the online dating revolution, this brainchild of two bored roommates explodes into Internet stardom--with 3 million hits a day and countless imitations--by inviting us to post a photo and see what happens next.


hijacking
Even after a U.S. court's '00 decision that domain names aren't property and can't be stolen, domain hijacks make headlines when Internet.com and Web.net are annexed. Reverse hijacks become an unwanted trend as e-squatters try to score a quick profit.


pets.com
Pets can't drive, but that doesn't mean pet owners will buy dog food online. Even a hilarious sock puppet in pricey TV ads can't save Pets.com. It crashes in '00, two years after its founding. The puppet, meanwhile, gets an agent and is still thriving.


half
The tiny town of Halfway, OR, survived the Gold Rush, but in '00, it's hit by the dot-com rush. The shopping site Half.com pays the town to rename itself Half.com as a publicity stunt. The town gets on the map, while the site is later bought by eBay.


domains
Two years after ICANN's birth, the quest for affordable, failsafe domain registration continues. As the Net grows, commercial domains remain the hottest commodity, but companies like Network Solutions help anyone forge a web presence.


shortfilms
In 2000, sites like iFilm and AtomFilms take advantage of the broadband boom to bring short films such as the infamous, much lauded 405 to our desktops. Soon enough, aspiring filmmakers start using the sites to promote their own mad creations.


bubble
With web portals AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! reporting losses--and countless startups calling it quits--the Nasdaq takes a nose dive. Analysts blame global financial and political crises for the Internet economy's gradual slide in the next two years.


mp3s
Music lovers start to prefer their music in the ultimate portable format--ones and zeros. The iPod quickly becomes everyone's favorite new toy. Apple, the first to make nice with the record industry, sells downloads for 99? in the iTunes Music Store.


wikipedia
Merging collaboration and reference, Wikipedia launches a web encyclopedia in '01--letting anyone write and edit entries. Despite concerns about accuracy, the online world embraces the free-content model, adding over a million entries by '05.


bankrupt
By '01, the bloom is off the Internet boom, and dot-coms with lofty ambitions and no profits file for bankruptcy. High-fliers WebVan and Kozmo fail to deliver the goods. Looks like we'll be buying food and other stuff in actual stores for a bit longer.


adultsupervision
Maturing web and tech businesses attract seasoned pros. Meg Whitman goes from Hasbro to eBay in '98; Carly Fiorina lands at HP in '99. Joining Yahoo! in '01 Terry Semel quickly reorganizes and innovates with search, broadband deals, and hit TV content.


s&p500
Net stocks hit the big time in Dec. '99 when Yahoo! is added to the Standard and Poor's 500 index. This collection of common stocks measures the general performance of the market, and Yahoo! is the second Internet company included, after AOL.


creativecommons
In December '02 Creative Commons releases flexible copyright licenses for use by content creators. The nonprofit, founded by law professor Lawrence Lessig, enables release of creative works, like web sites and photos, with some rights reserved.


socialnetworking
Looking for a date or new friend, but don't want to reach out and touch a total stranger? Taking the six degrees principle online, Friendster launches its social networking site in '02 to popular acclaim. Suddenly, everyone's part of your in-crowd.


dayofsilence
Protesting per-song royalty fees proposed by the U.S. Copyright Office, hundreds of Internet radio stations broadcast a full day of silence on May 1, 2002. Their efforts pay off on May 21, when federal regulators vote to reject the proposal.


dean
Before the scream, Howard Dean fires up the online world to harness the political reach of the Web. Deaniacs blog, meet up, and donate to his campaign. While Dean doesn't make it to Super Tuesday, he helps establish the political future of the Web.


marsrover
Space may be the final frontier, but it was also pretty boring--until NASA gave its fans a mission they could follow online. Its webcast of the Rover's Mars landing did wonders for the space agency and helped all of us see how far the Net can reach.


intelligence
Folks don't have to worry about fact-checking their own FBI files these days. Thanks to the Net and huge data server farms, everything we type, send, buy, and read has the potential to be tracked by the intelligence community. O, Big Brother, where art thou?


viralvideo
Spreading around offices faster than a cold in winter are video clips of the Star Wars Kid practicing his skills, Bubb Rubb explaining whistle tips' benefits, George Bush and John Kerry singing an American classic, and William Hung shaking his bon-bon.


thespot
It's back. In '95, this dot-bust "webisodic" featured the real-time exploits of 20-somethings in a Santa Monica beach house. Now it follows the Gen C trend in Europe and Asia of cam-phone soaps and lightweight novelettes for multimedia mobiles.


remember
Some say the Net is an unfeeling medium, but the 9/11 tile project proves otherwise. One year after the tragedy, millions of people from around the world create memorial tiles as part of Yahoo!'s tribute to the victims of that dark day.


opensource
Free and easy to modify, open source was pooh-poohed by big business as software's hippie commune. But the emergence of Linux as a viable alternative to operating systems like Windows changes software development--and the look of desktops everywhere.


amazon
Analysts once called it "Amazon.org" because the behemoth online bookseller performed like a nonprofit. In 2002, Jeff Bezos' baby finally goes into the black, and Amazon never looks back as the vast potential of Internet retailing becomes a reality.


flashmob
Organized via email, flash mobs enjoy fleeting notoriety in '03. Mobs consist of loosely connected folks who all show up somewhere at once, then disperse after making a stir. Sadly, enthusiasm for these ephemeral art installations proves short-lived.


slammerworm
In '03, a worm almost brings down the entire Net. Attacking Microsoft SQL servers, the Slammer Worm leaves a trail of melted routers and overburdened ISPs. The fastest-spreading worm the Web has ever seen, Slammer sets the bar for malicious computing.


hotspots
Unconnected? What's that? Thanks to the advent of WiFi hotspots, we can go online at the ballpark or even on the plane without packing a cord--but consumers may need just a little more convincing before they decide wireless access is worth the price.


donotcall
The Federal Trade Commission launches the online National Do Not Call Registry, and millions flock to the web site in hopes of once again eating dinner in peace. Perhaps Paris Hilton's phone buddies should start their own list.


homefront
War is hard enough without feeling disconnected from loved ones. Operation Homefront and another web site, CinCHouse.com, are created and led by military spouses to help soldiers overseas and families back home stay in touch and make it all a bit more bearable.


battlefield
Broadband access and access to frontlines provide uncensored battlefield web coverage when America goes to war in Iraq, enabling some soldiers and a handful of Iraqis to offer often chilling first-person accounts that slip past mainstream media. Salam Pax writes to us from Baghdad.


search
What powers nearly half of online searches in the U.S.? Yahoo! acquires Inktomi and then Overture in '03 and quickly launches Yahoo! Search worldwide in '04. By Feb. '04, Yahoo! Search Technology becomes the tool behind high-quality web searches.


fileonline
Eager to meet Congress' mandate that 80%25 of tax returns be filed electronically by 2007, the IRS turns to tax software makers, web portals, and tax prep firms in 2003. This government plan may be working: 35%25 of all returns were filed online in 2004.


browserwars
After Microsoft crushed Netscape, the company Gates built continued to lead the world in both operating systems (remember Windows '95's midnight release?) and Internet browsers. But in '04, early adopters have a new option when Mozilla's Firefox launches.


tsunami
When a tsunami slams into South Asia in Dec. '04, killing over 280,000, the world and the web community respond with unprecedented speed and generosity. Like countless others, Yahoo! users respond as a community to raise millions for disaster relief.


whatsnext
We've chronicled the last decade of the Web, and we're already working on exciting new ideas and ways to help you explore the online world. But now it's your turn--tell us where you think the Internet is heading. Please click the Comment link below to share your ideas, hopes, and dreams.