Flashback: Retro Web Sites

In 2009, Yahoo! is one of the most visited Web sites on the Internet, attracting 3.4 billion page views per day, and it hopes to get even more after it rolls out its new and improved face today. If you’d logged on in May 1997, however, you might have found yourself wondering what all the buzz was about. A bewildering list of headers and sub-headers were listed in bullet-point fashion down the bottom half, while near the top, big buttons marked with vague signifiers like “New” and “Cool” provided additional confusion. An icon marked “Today’s News”—in the ‘90s, news happened once per day—featured a rolled-up broadsheet to assure visitors that the information within was legit.