The homepages
Click a page to read its story.
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adobe.com in November 1999: a black header and four sections, Web, Print, Motion and ePaper Center; some images don’t render in this capture.
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AltaVista in May 1999, now at altavista.com: a yellow “Ask AltaVista™ a question” band with the example “Where can I download mp3 files for instrumental music?”
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AOL.COM in May 1999: a dense portal with 146 link tags and “Try AOL Now and get 100 Hours FREE!”
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The orange iBook: “iMac to go”.
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BBC Online in January 1999: Today on the Web features Radio 1 and the Prodigy, beside a left menu of Main BBC Sites.
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Best Buy in May 1999: “Welcome to our ONLINE STORE!” with music and DVDs online and other departments in a retail-stores menu; many images lost.
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Blizzard's icon sidebar and dated news, including “Starcraft named biggest selling computer game of 1998”; the big promotional area is blank in this capture.
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disney.go.com in 1999: the four family-portal tiles as plain colored panels, their pictures not loading in this capture; highlights for March 28, 1999.
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GameFAQs homepage: a red-and-grey table layout puts GameFAQs news beside game rankings and search; masthead graphics are missing.
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GameSpot's 1999 homepage: Best and Worst of 1998 leads a dense PC homepage with demos, a Macintosh poll and VRML navigation.
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Yahoo! GeoCities: Build a Page, Edit Pages, Upload Files, and “one of our 41 Neighborhoods”.
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MSN Hotmail in January 1999: the same blue page, now with a Microsoft copyright.
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Lycos in January 1999: “INDEX OF WEB GUIDES” with 22 categories from Autos to Travel; several images are missing in this capture.
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McDonald's framed homepage adds Collectibles and “Coming Soon! Ty® teenie Beanie Babies™!”
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“What's your opinion on Microsoft?”, Windows 2000 previews and a Year 2000 product guide.
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MSN.com in November 1999: tabs for Home, Hotmail, Search, Shopping, Money and People & Chat, yellow link columns and a holly-trimmed logo.
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Nintendo’s homepage in April 1999: a Mario Party banner, “Join Nintendo’s biggest stars for the frantic four-player fun of Mario Party!”
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Nokia's homepage in October 1999: CNN's “Voices of the Millennium”, a live Kenzo webcast, a WAP Server beta and a Year 2000 box.
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NYTimes.com in April 1999: Kosovo, a Columbine memorial photo and a markets box with a 20-minute delay.
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The Space Jam lobby with an “ANSWER: Fathers’ Day” card, a “Don’t Miss These Great Deals!” ad box and “Buy The Soundtrack”.
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Guardian Unlimited in April 1999: the new network’s wordmark, picture tiles led by the Jill Dando murder investigation and a note asking readers to register past the homepage.
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Wal-Mart’s online store in November 1999: a list of departments, toy prices such as a Barney Magic Banjo at $23.97, with most pictures not rendering in the capture.
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Yahoo in April 1999: “free email for life”, Yahoo! Pager, and auctions of Pokemon, Beanie Babies and Furbys.
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EA's cyan-and-black portal: demos, patches, Populous news and support that saves “the cost of a call”.
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eBay in May 1999: the overlapping four-color logo, category counts and a stats box with “1,990,090 items for sale”.
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Nick.com in April 1999: a blimp-shaped Nickelodeon logo, Today’s Specials and “Nicktionary - It's simply define!”
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“Earth's Biggest Selection”: Auctions, zShops and a Search of the Day.
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Ask Jeeves in April 1999: “Where can I learn about MIDI?” as the example, a red “Ask me about:” menu and “Here's what others are asking right now!”
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Cartoon Network’s November 1999 homepage: a collage of picture links led by Courage the Cowardly Dog and Mike, Lu & Og.
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Craigslist in January 1999: the tab now says craigslist, and a red line warns “System email broadcast is slow”.
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ESPN.com in April 1999: a GO Network bar with Infoseek search above the red ESPN.com wordmark and “Road longer for desperate Ducks”.
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Microsoft Expedia Travel with a blue menu bar, Bahamas getaways from $299 and a fare finder set to May 15–17.
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Google in January 1999: still “Google!” in beta, with Stanford and Linux searches and a monthly e-mail newsletter.
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ICQ.com in February 1999: a blue sidebar, a “Make ICQ sing for you” banner and a link for “CFS (Compulsive Forwarding Syndrome)”.
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IGN in April 1999: the same yellow frame with a new tab and column, The Den, beside the game news.
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IKEA Worldwide in May 1999: the same portal, with a “your POÄNG” design tool and a new IKEA Canada site in the news column.
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The Newgrounds homepage’s plain version in 1999: “The New Ground name dates back to 1992”, with one paragraph and picture per attraction.
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PlayStation’s global homepage in April 1999: the black page with the logo on a globe and the regions on orbiting controller buttons.
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Pokémon Times in May 1999: a card game tour, Hasbro toys retiring, Reader Art and a Lunchables party contest.
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Winamp homepage in 1999: the dark portal now promotes Winamp 2.10 and a taller stack of player, equalizer, playlist and minibrowser screenshots. Some images are missing in this archived rendering.
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First captureBlogger’s compact blue launch page explains templates and FTP publishing beside two account forms.
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First captureNapster’s feature list describes MP3 search, HotList and playlists; images do not render.
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First capture“Rent It – $4.00” per DVD, over 2,600 titles, and “Rent from NetFlix.com, Buy from Amazon.com!”
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First capturePayPal’s homepage in October 1999: a blue page, login fields and two sentences about Palm organizers and email.
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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