The homepages
Click a page to read its story.
- adobe.com – 1996Oct 22, 1996
First captureadobe.com in October 1996: “Designing Women” honors two Salon art directors, with yellow product tiles and a Get Acrobat Reader badge.
- altavista.com – 1996Dec 29, 1996
First captureAltaVista in December 1996 at altavista.digital.com: a painted mountain masthead, one search line and “Happy Birthday AltaVista Search! 1 year, #1 on the Web, 1st on your PC!”
- aol.com – 1996Dec 20, 1996
First captureAOL in December 1996: a red page with Christmas pine, “The future. Now available on aol” and a Buddy List box.
- apple.com – 1996Oct 22, 1996
First capture“Apple Computer”: a red sidebar, two dozen country sites and a column of news. Most images were never archived.
- bbc.co.uk – 1996Dec 21, 1996
First captureThe BBC's homepage in December 1996: a navy page with the BBC blocks and two buttons, “About the BBC” and “Programmes”.
- bestbuy.com – 1996Dec 25, 1996
First captureBest Buy’s homepage in December 1996: the yellow tag in holiday lights, “Find the Fun in Everyone.” and a 101 Dalmatians coupon book.
- blizzard.com – 1996Oct 19, 1996
First captureBlizzard's white news column: “Warcraft II v1.33 Expansion Patch Available” and badges for Diablo, battle.net and Starcraft.
- disney.com – 1996Dec 22, 1996
First capturedisney.com in December 1996: Woody and Buzz in a hand-drawn masthead, “Log on Sunday for the $5,000.00 Prize Drawing!”, above three columns of links.
- gamefaqs.com – 1996Dec 23, 1996
First captureGameFAQs homepage: white VGFA initials and the Video Game FAQ Archive name head a black page of console links and brief updates.
- gamespot.com – 1996Nov 5, 1996
First captureGameSpot's 1996 homepage: Black, image-led PC gaming homepage with yellow letter-disc logo and a Low-Band option.
- geocities.com – 1996Oct 22, 1996
First captureGeoCities homepage: a red city-collage banner, “one of our 29 neighborhoods”, and HotSprings 1837 as Today's Cool Homestead.
- hotmail.com – 1996Dec 20, 1996
First captureOur oldest HoTMaiL capture: one sign-in box, “Enter” and a red “Who Should Sign Up?”; the header images are missing.
- imdb.com – 1996Nov 19, 1996
First captureFour large links, a question about a movie, and a small footer crediting the people and software behind the site.
- lego.com – 1996Nov 9, 1996
First captureLEGO.com in November 1996: a grey baseplate background, seven minifigure pictures as the menu and a welcome letter that calls each child visitor “our V.I.P.”
- lycos.com – 1996Oct 22, 1996
First captureLycos in October 1996: a globe in the logo, “It's amazing where Go Get It will get you.” and a search box labeled “Find:”.
- mcdonalds.com – 1996Nov 10, 1996
First captureRed splash page: “Did you know...” and “Click on the Golden Arches to continue”.
- microsoft.com – 1996Oct 20, 1996
First captureThe banner is lost; its alt text reads “MICROSOFT: Where do you want to go today?”. 38 locations, ten kinds of visitor, “Best experienced with Internet Explorer”.
- msn.com – 1996Oct 22, 1996
First captureMSN’s homepage in October 1996: “Create a free custom start page.”, a “made fresh daily” wordmark and a link to the new msn.com beta.
- nintendo.com – 1996Dec 22, 1996
First capturenintendo.com on December 22, 1996: the Nintendo Power Source splash page, “WELCOME TO WWW.NINTENDO.COM”, with a note on the browsers and Shockwave plug-in the site needed.
- nokia.com – 1996Dec 19, 1996
First captureNokia's oldest homepage we found: “Connecting People”, oval buttons and a footer saying it was last modified on 16-Dec-96 at 16:57:27.
- nytimes.com – 1996Nov 12, 1996
First captureThe New York Times on the Web in November 1996: the main front-page panel is one clickable picture, with sections from Front Page to Web Specials.
- spacejam.com – 1996Dec 27, 1996
First captureSpace Jam's entrance: Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan tinted blue, and one small red word, “click”.
- theguardian.com – 1996Dec 22, 1996
First captureThe Guardian’s homepage in December 1996: thirteen navy buttons with short captions, from “the 1996 budget” to “alt.culture”, a guide to nineties counterculture.
- walmart.com – 1996Dec 29, 1996
First capturewalmart.com in December 1996: a “World At Large Online Shopping Center” page with a globe, a visit counter and one link under “Interesting Links”: “AOL Sucks”.
- yahoo.com – 1996Oct 17, 1996
First captureYahoo's October 1996 homepage: fourteen subjects from Arts to Society and Culture under a search box.
One capture per site from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, checked by eye. What a capture shows is what the archive kept that day: some images and scripts are missing.
Every year
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