What 3 dotcom giants looked like 15 years ago during their heydays

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There's been a lot of talk about bubble 2.0 lately, and one company that was hot in the first bubble - AOL - just got acquired (again). So it seems like a good time to reminisce about the way the web used to be.

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15 years ago, smartphones weren't around and PCs were in vogue.

Here's what the webpages of three popular AOL competitors looked like back then.

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This is AOL on May 12, 2000. Notice the first ad tells you you can "find and buy any book" on Amazon.com:

AOL May 12, 2000

AOL/Wayback Machine

AOL May 12, 2000

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This is eXcite.com, a popular search portal that had a chance to buy Google for $1 million but didn't. It sold itself to @Home for $7.2 billion in 1999 and in 2001 it went bankrupt.

Here's eXcite.com on May 12, 2000. Notice the news story, "All hail Napster!"

Here's Yahoo on May 12, 2000, promising "free email for life." It has kept that promise so far.

Notice below, there's an offer of "Free 56K ISP and email." That was a pretty fast speed for the dial-up era.

It's laughable today, now that household cable will deliver 50M, and, if you're lucky enough to get Google Fiber, you're ISP will deliver 1G.

Yahoo 2000

Wayback 2000

If you want to keep strolling down memory lane, here's what 23 popular websites used to look like years ago.

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