Yahoo! retrospective inspired by 10x10, an online artwork by Jonathan Harris

March 3, 2005 4:37 AM

Yahoo! retrospective inspired by 10x10, an online artwork by Jonathan Harris. We thought Yahoo! Inc.'s 10th birthday would be a great excuse to take a look back and think about how the Internet has developed over the last ten years, becoming an essential part of all of our daily lives. We've created a special site, Yahoo! Netrospective: 10 years, which celebrates the web's history over the last decade. We hope the Yahoo! Netrospective will take you on a trip down memory lane, in a format we think is really cool.--Jerry & David
posted by airguitar (12 comments total)

Yes, technically a double-post, but this one is about the 10x10 format and Jonathan Harris and Jerry and David saying they like it so much, and a big company adopting a cool format developed by an independent artist, to celebrate an 'important milestone for our company'. Coincidencia Oppositorum. Plus not everyone reads the comments, so this 'netrospective', which I thought was the best, slipped under the radar for a lot people. If I'm wrong, then I suffer the ax.
posted by airguitar at 4:37 AM on March 3, 2005

Thanks for the press release.
posted by Dukebloo at 5:59 AM on March 3, 2005

I enjoyed this. Plus its got that old school Praystation Flash nav-- that does take me back a ways.
posted by gwint at 6:54 AM on March 3, 2005

For what it matters, I was one of the people they linked (That's my Minor Threat photo, upper left, second over). I don't entirely mind, but some time ago I wanted faster reaction on my website for my documentary, so I bought a virtual hosting service. Yahoo simply went straight in and linked directly to my photo album. 1.8gb of transfer by 8,000 people in 24 hours. Ow.
posted by jscott at 7:23 AM on March 3, 2005

This is neat. I don't use Yahoo for anything these days, so I wouldn't have seen this if it wasn't linked here, and ten years of pretty even-handed Web history is best of the web to me, at least. Thanks for posting it!
posted by mendel at 7:50 AM on March 3, 2005

Holy shit jscott, tell me that you have contacted Yahoo or put up a referral image saying hey Yahoo you owe me money for bandwidth????
posted by cavalier at 9:41 AM on March 3, 2005

I would've thought Google entering popular usage as a verb would be good enough to cement them a spot in the hundred moments of the last 10 years of the internet.
posted by too many notes at 9:53 AM on March 3, 2005

Yeah, 10 years ago Yahoo was a pretty neat search engine. Then they went in and took over Geocities and ran it into the ground with popups and arcane service restrictions. Then they took over egroups and ruined it as well. Their email accounts get almost as much spam as that other sellout, Hotmail, and a couple of months ago they changed my password without telling me about it, and it took me about a month to make them believe I was me. In short, Yahoo went from being the underdog fighting the big bad corporate world to the big company with a profit-over-service viewpoint.

So what are we celebrating again? Meh.
posted by Poagao at 9:55 AM on March 3, 2005

I looked for Google too! But I think it's too much to ask of Yahoo.
posted by jcruelty at 11:55 AM on March 3, 2005

They mention Google (both as a seach engine and a verb) in #18.
posted by chickygrrl at 2:50 PM on March 3, 2005

Yeah, I mean, the fact that Yahoo turns ten is only of interest to me in that it frames where I am now with what I was doing ten years ago. I tried to hyperlink some of the generalizations they were making with more objective versions of what, coming from them, was bound to be Yahoo-centric. It just jumped out at me when I saw them using the 10x10 format. I thought 'you ripoffs!' Then I read that they were loudly giving credit to J Harris, and I thought 'that's cool.' But really, I wonder if 'the founders' happened upon 10x10 the same way I did and really liked it and said 'let's get one for the birthday'. Or if someone in a department just came up with it for them, and they signed off on it. For just that second I was thinking 'they read the same metafilter link I did, or they browse the del.icio.us Popular page'. Just for that second, I thought that.

For what it's worth, I could never understand why Yahoo! got so much hype. Watching the stock hit 400-something on the NASDAQ was an education in stock market freakouts for me.

And yes, they mentioned Google, pointing out that the first chosen name was Back Rub. What could have been... (it's #18)

preview: thanks chicky
posted by airguitar at 3:02 PM on March 3, 2005

Yahoo, nice, neat, simple & clean.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:49 PM on March 3, 2005