Web Tour: Early Websites of Internet Giants

I like to play around with Way Back Machine – the site that archives screen shots of websites in years past.  We’ve put together a little tour of early versions of now-ubiquitous websites. We think you’ll enjoy this little web tour. So, put on some Pearl Jam (they were hot in 1998) and set your browsers to 640 by 480 and relax:

Google in 1998:

This incarnation of Google was still hosted at Stanford University and featured an index of 25 million pages, but was “soon to be much bigger”.

Yahoo.com in 1996:

Apple.com in 1997:

We love this early Apple design, only about 400 pixels wide. This site would fit on most cell-phone browsers.

Tiger Direct in 1996:

An early version of online retail giant Tiger Direct.

WhiteHouse.gov in 1998:

A fine-looking site from 1998, from President Clinton and the man who invented the internet.

Infoseek in 1997:

A pre-Google version of Infoseek…

Compaq.com in 1996:

NBC.com in 1996: