![]() ![]() I never really used it and was mostly annoyed by all those long pages with music that would automatically start to play. It's now hard to believe that MySpace (with slogan 'A Place for Friends') once was one of the most popular social networks on the internet. Napster is still around, but it's now a legal music service, trying to lure users with its nostalgic name (don't be fooled). Many people also used Napster back in the days because there weren't many good legal alternatives yet. In 2000 rockband Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, which led to the end of the illegal service (however, many other illegal services, like KaZaa, were still available). It was not as fantastic as you might remember - it was slow, it could be hard to find music (since not everybody used correct file names) and chances were high you would download a wrong file with a virus. Napster was a 'P2P'-service (peer-to-peer) service for sharing files online and many used it to download illegal mp3 music files. Napster (founded in 1999) and MySpace (founded in 2003) are still around today, but in other forms that the original - and much less popular now than back in the days. In 2013 it was discontinued (after being renamed Windows Live Messenger) and instead Microsoft focused on Skype, that it had acquired in 2011. With the rise of smartphones and WhatsApp (introduced in 2009), MSN Messenger became obsolete. I think the university eventually went for a ban on MSN Messenger on their computers, but I'm not sure if I remember that correctly. ![]() I remember all the students being addicted to chatting on MSN on the university computers, keeping computers occupied for students that actually wanted to work. I was a little older then and went to university. The free e-mail services (besides Hotmail, Yahoo and later on Gmail) had a great advantage above traditional e-mail: you could (and still) can consult them on every computer, not only your home computer! Microsoft replaced Hotmail with the confusing named (not the mail program? or maybe a little?) in 2013.Īnother very successful Microsoft program was MSN Messenger, an instant messaging service first released in 1999. It was one of the first free e-mail services on the internet and even today there are still many Hotmail e-mail addresses around, that originate from the late 90s. Hotmail was founded in 1996 and bought by Microsoft in 1997. I remember fondly that Internet Explorer even had some of its 'own' HTML codes (not supported by Netscape), like the code, that showed a scrolling light text. In 2015 Microsoft introduced the new Edge browser, but that still has a long way to go to reach the popularity of Internet Explorer. Finally, Microsoft was forced to give users the choice between different browsers in Windows instead of just the preinstalled Internet Explorer. This led to unfair browser competition and some major monetary penalties by government trade regulators. ![]() Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer in 1995 and originally bundled the browser with its own Windows operating systems - leading to a massive market share of 95 procent around 2003 (for PC users - most Mac users kept using Netscape). But due to the heavy competition of Netscape (1994) and Internet Explorer (1995), Mosaic ended in 1997. It was released in 1993 was one of the first graphical web browsers. However, Netscape had a predecessor: Mosaic. In the first article I already wrote about Netscape Navigator. I believe Angelfire and Tripod are still around, though I'm not sure if those services are still offered for free. However, in time some of them just disappeared. It offered a nice free website service and I hosted some personal websites there. While Angelfire and GeoCities were more popular, I actually liked Tripod the best. Most famous is probably Angelfire (1996) and in 1997 Lycos acquired (originally founded in 1995). It was founded in 1995 and also offered some free website services - similar to GeoCities (see first article). However, another search engine that many will remember (and that is actually still around) is Lycos, originally accompanied with the slogan 'The Catalog of the Internet'. Some RetroJunk readers also remembered Ask Jeeves! and Dogpile. In the first article I mentioned Yahoo!, AltaVista and WebCrawler as some of the first search engines before Google. In this second article I'll look at some more aspects of the early internet many 80s/early 90s kids probably will remember. In the first article I wrote about Grey Website Backgrounds, Netscape, Yahoo!, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Easy HTML codes, Website Under Construction Signs, E-mail Scams, GeoCities, ICQ, Books, noisy modem sounds and internet over phone lines. In this series of articles I look back at those days. I grew up in the 80s and 90s - the upcoming years of the internet. ![]()
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