If you’ve been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to watch the internet evolve, then you probably appreciate how far web design has come. It’s pretty incredible how much things have changed over a fairly short amount of time.
That’s made all the more apparent when you look at some of the most popular sites when they first hit the web. Using the Way Back Machine, we were able to step back in time. What we found is pretty laughable by today’s standards!
1. YouTube had a very different interface back in the day.
2. E-commerce has come a long, long way.
3. I’m glad to see that Monday Night Football has stepped its game up.
4. They even had an online greeter.
5. This is just sad.
6. Did a Chevy fan create this site?
7. The Dallas Cowboys website looked more like an old-fashioned video game.
8. Check out that clip art!
9. Back when “online” was spelled “on-line.”
10. Pepsi, it appears that we’ve entered the Matrix.
11. The Weather Channel’s page might look better now, but that doesn’t change the fact that it steers us wrong regularly.
12. Nike clearly went through some growing pains.
13. Honestly, this one isn’t so bad.
14. Ah, McDonald’s. Remember when your site looked like an error page?
15. Yikes. YIKES.
16. This one actually isn’t terrible. Good on you, Hershey.
17. Pamela Anderson used to have a whole page to herself! You go, Pam.
18. Not much has changed, to be honest.
19. Slay those bullet points, Home Depot!
20. Yahoo, you’ve always been bad. Sorry ’bout it.
21. New England head coach Pete Carroll?! This is insanely old.
22. This is the internet equivalent of leaving your Christmas lights up all year long.
23. I see they went with a nice outer space aesthetic.
24. Be thankful for the Amazon you know and love today.
25. Not bad, ESPN. Not bad.
26. Hard to believe that this is the company that ultimately took over the world.
(via Business Insider)
Thank goodness we’ve moved past these. I’m sure we’ll look back on the same sites 15 years from now and say the same thing, so let’s live it up while we can!