Subscription Options

June 8, 2009

A quick look back on household names...

I was flicking through Alan Mather's blog the other day (Which I heartily recommend) and found his post on Bing.com, how it was and how it is today.


It inspired me to check out some of the other household names on the web to see how much they have changed, and to try to track how we have changed along with them. It made for an interesting little research project. 


The NY Times didn't really "get" the web in 1996... Notice the line at the bottom telling everyone to fit their browser to the page.


...but the Wall Street Journal did.. even back then. Notice the difference. One actively cultivating an online commercial model, while the other was just using a placeholder site. No wonder the WSJ is one of very few sites to capitalize on their scarce content commercially online. 




Google still looked like a students experiment in 1997, which it was...(cute eh?)




Meanwhile Yahoo was striding the Internet and dominating the "portal" and directory industry... totally oblivious to the fact that their visitors actually wanted a search engine..




Force.com hadn't yet become the platform for developing SaaS solutions...in fact it was hawking some sort of Palm pilot strap I think...




I think Marc Benioff has done a far better job with it personally...




And lastly a glimpse into the past of AOL.com. Notice that their first site, which was near their heyday, was all about "we got stuff for you"...




While the site today is all about "We got your stuff, AND NEWS!"




Amazing how the world has changed. And amazing how the way these sites started seems to have had a lot to do with where they have ended up at present. From arrogant to desperate (AOL.com), from complex to simple (The Google vs Yahoo experience) and the power of starting out with a consistent vision and sticking to it. (The WSJ)


More to come on this one I think...


If you enjoyed this post please consider subscribing to this feed, or you can subscribe to Consulting Pulse by email.