Cover of Yahoo Magazine - top of the net 97

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Best of the 'Net - 1997

What was happening with the Internet in 1997? Things were all rosy - the Dot-Com bubble was still inflating with no end of growth in sight. Study a little ancient history (in web years)!

February 28, 2013

Reading time:

min

OUR EXPERTISE

Digital Experience Strategy

Joel Baglien

VP of Business Development

The year is 1997 the Internet is going like gang-busters - that big nasty tech sector meltdown is years away. So what was popular on the 'Net all those years ago?

Netscape 3.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 were in a head to head battle for web browser dominance
Top Sites of 1997 - Netscape, Yahoo!, Microsoft
Top Corporate Sites - United Parcel Service, Nike, and Federal Express
Coolest Sites - Expedia.com and the Onion.com
Chat Champions - Rosie O'Donnell (AOL), George Clooney (Prodigy)
Top Multiplayer Game - Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Sun Online, Quake
31% of CIOs planned to increase Internet spending in 1998
20 million Americans consider the Inetrnet "indispensible"
A Gateway desktop computer powered by an Intel 300 MHz Pentium II, 64MB RAM, 8.4GB hard drive with all the bells and whistles a gamer could desire cost a cool $5000. Today's Value? Unless you are a collector, the right answer is "boat anchor"!

Source: Yahoo! Internet Life, vol 4, issue 1, January 1998