4 ms·
I remember that era pretty fondly and I don't ever recall just typing in random URLs, except maybe jokey ones like sex.com or fuck.com for kicks. We had Yahoo's
by drzaiusapelord 6y ago
I remember that era pretty fondly and I don't ever recall just typing in random URLs, except maybe jokey ones like sex.com or fuck.com for kicks. We had Yahoo's search engine at the time and worked well enough. And to a lesser extent Lycos/Hotbot/Inktomi/DMOZ. The pre-Google web was pretty interesting and a bit more sophisticated than gets credit today. I also feel you were less likely to discover retailers on the web randomly. You'd more than likely hear about them first on the news or from friends and go from there. I don't think it was common to just discover some random e-tailer like we do today, put in our credit card, and expect the package in a couple days. You learned about Amazon from 60 minutes or your friend who subscribed to Wired magazine or the guy at the software store, not from a search engine.
I think the whole pets.com and travel.com is just the usual marketing logic at work and not really related to the limitation of search engines. Its just shady marketing tricks, a bit like how we see the .biz and other gimmicky tlds today.
- devlopr 6y agoIt was really common to type in random words as domains expecting something. People would make mistakes so people would buy domains with common spelling mistakes.
- toyg 6y agoBrowsers also tried to autocomplete <word> as www.<word>.com (and .net and .org, iirc) and send you there if it resolved. At some point they switched to sending you to search engines instead, but i bet there are flags somewhere in Firefox' bowels that will still do that for you if you really want.
- kindall 6y agoOr you just hit Ctrl-Enter
- mortenjorck 6y agoI have a random memory of the website at hanson.com having a banner alerting visitors that the website of the popular late-90s boy band was in fact at hansonline.com, and that you would only find information about guitars made by the Hanson company should you further browse the site at which you currently found yourself. Curiously, that domain now redirects to some concrete company, Hanson guitars existing instead at hanson-guitars.com.