Internet History Podcast

Hadi Partovi was one of the original 9 people on the Internet Explorer project. He left Microsoft in the late 90s to found Tellme Networks, which was eventually acquired by Microsoft for $800 million dollars. This precipitated a second stint at Microsoft where he was General Manager of MSN.com during MSN’s only year of profit, and where he incubated Start.com (which became Live.com, which now points to Microsofts’ online Outlook efforts). After leaving Microsoft a second time, he joined up with his brother Ari to found iLike, which was purchased by Myspace, and both Partovi brothers worked for a time as Senior Vice Presidents at Myspace. In between all this, Hadi and Ari were early investors in Zappos, Facebook and Dropbox, served as advisors to Facebook and still serve as advisors to Dropbox. Hadi is currently the founder and CEO of Code.org, a non-profit working to help schools teach coding to students around the world.Here is a link to a recent interview with both Partovi brothers.The post page for this episode is here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the early web grows, the explosion of content and websites creates chaos. Early search engines are among the most popular sites on the early web, as users try to find their way around the new medium. Sites like Excite, Lycos, Alta Vista and others try to take an algorithm and data-based route to organizing the chaos, but the site that leaps to the front of the pack, Yahoo!, goes in the other direction, creating a hand-sorted directory.We learn how Jerry Yang and David Filo started Yahoo! in a trailer on the campus of Stanford University and prepare to make the first great brand of the Internet Era.Bibliography: http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will-start-out-looking-like-a-toy/ Gainesville Sun, July 31, 1995 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19950731&id=MENWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=k-oDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3855,7057240 http://stuff.mit.edu/people/mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/history.htm http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/excite.html http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-02-11/what-hath-yahoo-wrought http://www.thinkpink.com/bp/WebCrawler/History.html http://www.wordstream.com/articles/internet-search-engines-history http://web.archive.org/web/20090501140446/http://www.clubi.ie/webserch/engines/infoseek/history.htm http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/18/business/digital-equipment-offers-web-browsers-its-super-spider.html http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2215868/53-of-Organic-Search-Clicks-Go-to-First-Link-Study http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/03/02/238576/ “Found You On Yahoo” Red Herring, October 1, 1995 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/03/02/238576/ Yang, Jerry; Filo, David; Yahoo! Unplugged: Your Discovery Guide to the Web Reid, Robert H.; Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of BusinessSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What If I Told You…… there was a crazy entrepreneur who was the true founder of what would become America Online? He was the guy who hired Steve Case back before AOL was AOL.What if I told you that same entrepreneur invented true, networked, online gaming—not in the era of the Xbox 360, but back in the days of the Atari 2600?What if I then told you that same entrepreneur invented a Napster/Pandora/Spotify/Sirius-like music service, all the way back in 1981, before the compact disc was even widely available?That Man Is William von MeisterAnd he is the subject of this episode. I’ve enjoyed all of the episodes we’ve done so far, but I have to say this has been the most fun. It’s exciting to shed some light on a bit of history that I think has been criminally overlooked. And to be honest, it’s just such a crazy story, about a hard drinking, heavy-smoking, women-chasing entrepreneur, seemingly from the Mad Men cloth, who was “a pathological entrepreneur” with a “reality-distortion-field” that would give Steve Jobs a run for his money. It’s a story of about a dozen harebrained businesses, none of which were really successful (excepting of course that some or all of them lent their DNA to the company that would become AOL) but all of which were way ahead of their time, and in many ways, presaged technologies we take for granted today.Details:Some of the articles I mentioned about the GameLine System:HereHereand HereAlso, the books mentioned as source materials:Kara Swisher: aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the WebMichael A. Banks: On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its FoundersAlec, Klein: Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time WarnerAlso, this:See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Craig Kanarick was one of the people responsible for the first ever banner ad, which appeared on Oct. 27, 1994 on Hotwired.com. As mentioned in the podcast, there’s no “first” ad, as several were launched in a rotation at the same time. But as mentioned on the podcast, a lot of people like to think of the first ad as this one, for AT&T, which you can see here:And for more information about the “You Will” AT&T campaign, read about it here, or dig this.Craig went on to found Razorfish, along with his childhood friend Jeff Dachis. Razorfish was a pioneering design, technology and advertising studio that brought many large brands and corporations onto the web for the first time. Razorfish was also a pioneer of the web-tech scene in New York City, which has come to be called “Silicon Alley.” Craig is currently the founder of Mouth.com, headquartered in the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, as is this podcast (thus, the DUMBO-ish picture I chose above). In our conversation, I mention some contentious media coverage that Razorfish received back in the day, in my opinion, painting them as poster-boys for dotcom-era excess. I offer some of those articles for context:New York MagazineWired60 Minutes IISee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

America Online survives the inevitable run-in with Microsoft, only to come out the other side stronger. The company has to endure major PR fiascos and network capacity issues, but eventually sees itself firmly established as one of the major players of the dot com era.Bibliography: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=6&topic= http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffaol.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set= http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-04-14/the-online-world-of-steve-case http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-08-25/has-the-net-finally-reached-the-wall Swisher, Kara; AOL.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com@brianmcc@nethistorypodSummary:We take a step back to look at the early online services: CompuServe, Delphi, GEine, the WELL and especially, early AOL. Why? Well, because online services very much served as “training wheels” for the Internet. Online services were NOT the Internet, exactly; at least not at first. But they very much helped get people used to living life in an online environment. AOL especially would grow and enjoy success to the point that it became one of the most powerful companies in technology. We take a look at how America Online grew to dominate the online services market before the inevitable showdown with (who else?) Microsoft.Bibliography: Banks, Michael; On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/happy-30th-birthday-compuserve/24853 Stryker, Cole; Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan?s Army Conquered the Web http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/prodigy.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set= http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/08/business/at-age-9-prodigy-on-line-reboots.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1995-02-12/prodigy-is-in-that-awkward-stage http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=4&topic= http://www.quora.com/AOL-History/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s Swisher, Kara; AOL.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com@nethistorypod @brianmccSummary:Rob McCool is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Unlike a lot of the others we have spoken to, he worked more on the server side of the equation for both projects. Rob was also the original author of the NCSA HTTPd web server, later known as the Apache HTTP Server, so we can think of him as the Godfather of Apache. He was a contributor to the initial specification of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and later what became known as the Netscape Enterprise Server. Rob went on to work at both Yahoo and Onlive. He is currently at Google, where he works on structured Knowledge Bases and semantics.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions of both Mosiac and Navigator eventually became the project manager for the Netscape Navigator project on the whole. He gives us great background and details about the development of browsers, the creation of features (he is the father of the hand icon, for example, and was instrumental in bringing image support to the web) and early web advancements in general.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosiac. They don’t call him “Mac Daddy” for nothing. He was then one of the 6 original programmers recruited by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark to form Netscape. Aleks gives us some excellent behind the scenes anecdotes about both projects, and what it was like to head out to California to work on some crazy startup before doing something like that was “cool.”A few fun nuggets of history we mention in the conversation: Click to hear Marc Andreessen ask, “What is global hypermedia?” back in 1993.  The famous whiteboard. They packed up the truck and moved to Beverly Mountain View  Original Mozilla t-shirt designs. 20-year old photos of the NSCP team.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary:Microsoft was on top of the world at the dawn of the Internet Era… but like Jack Dawson in Titanic? Microsoft would pivot, and pivot hard, once it realized that the Internet was The Next Big Thing. This episode outlines how younger Microsoft employees agitated for a greater focus on the Internet, and how Bill Gates “got” the Internet religion. Microsoft’s embrace of the Internet is truly one of the greatest acts of agility in corporate history. Windows 95 and Internet Explorer are launched, and the seeds are sewn for the great anti-trust battle to come.Bibliography: How the Web Was Won; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 1999 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fabout%2Fcompanyinformation%2Ftimeline%2Ftimeline%2Fdocs%2Fdi_killerapp_InternetMemo.rtf&ei=ThtoUsvfDq234APWkICIDw&usg=AFQjCNHO04HZPALsUN9Rp4v1jKDYQ8eRpQ&sig2=_bymmx2MJUK8z9gzgACCTw&bvm=bv.55123115,d.dmg Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2008020017_webgatesmemo275.html http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-07-14/inside-microsoft http://www.zdnet.com/news/browser-wars-high-price-huge-rewards/128738 The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates; Rohm, Wendy http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,985115-2,00.html http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032-995681.html Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, RobertSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.