Ask Jeeves
The search engine with a cartoon butler you asked full questions in plain English. Type "How tall is the Eiffel Tower?" and Jeeves would fetch the answer — a friendlier face on the early web.
#Old Web
7 items
eBaum's World
The early-2000s comedy and media dump every kid browsed instead of doing homework. Flash cartoons, prank-call soundboards, funny clips, and simple games — all stamped with the site's inescapable watermark, which became the running joke and the scandal at once.
ICQ
The pioneering instant messenger with the green-flower icon, the random UIN number, and the unmistakable "Uh oh!" message alert. Launched in 1996, ICQ basically invented consumer IM before AIM and MSN took over.
Lycos
The wolf-spider-named search engine with the eager black Labrador that would 'Go Get It!' One of the first search giants — briefly bigger than Yahoo — and one of the great cautionary tales of the dot-com bubble.
MapQuest
Before your phone knew where you were, you printed directions from MapQuest and prayed you didn't miss step 14. The pre-GPS road-trip ritual, in a stack of warm printer paper.
MSN Gaming Zone
For a lot of people, the first place you ever played games against strangers over the internet — dial in, drop into a lobby, and play Hearts, Spades, or Age of Empires. Microsoft's online-gaming portal, and a quiet ancestor of Xbox Live.
Netscape Navigator
The browser with the shooting-star "N" and the throbbing loading icon that, for millions, simply was the early web. Netscape dominated the mid-1990s before losing the browser war to Microsoft's bundled Internet Explorer.