Internet giants who ended up in the rubbish of history. From my own fault (and not only) [TOPtech]

In the TOPtech series, Daniel Maikowski, a Gazeta.pl journalist, presents news from the world of technology. In today’s episode, we look at internet giants who, due to their own mistakes, lack of innovation, and unclean licks from competitors, ended up in the dustbin of history.

Altavista

Before Google hit the horizon, Altavista was one of the most popular search engines in the world. It was established in 1995, and its greatest strength was the innovative – for those times – keyword indexing technology.

The growing popularity of the Google and Yahoo search engines meant that after 2000 Altavista began to lose its importance. In 2004, the company fell into the hands of the aforementioned Yahoo, which could not restore its former glory. Altavista closed a decade later after almost no one remembered its existence anymore.

Netscape

In 1995, Netscape had a whopping 90 percent share of the web browser market. However, this domination definitely did not like Bill Gates. At the end of the 90s, Microsoft, along with its Internet Explorer, began to chew on the market rival. He did it, among others, taking advantage of the popularity of Windows.

IE was attached to each copy of the system, thanks to which, in a short time, Microsoft’s application won the “browser war”. The Redmond firm was not even hindered by accusations of monopoly practices that forced Bill Gates to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Though Netscape closed in 2007, it has become immortal in a way. The creators of the browser provided her with the source code of the Mozilla Foundation, which used it to create Firefox.

MySpace

Founded in 2003, MySpace has quickly become the most popular social networking platform in the world. The website was used by both ordinary users, companies and music bands who could publish their songs there.

In 2005, MySpace fell into the hands of the Rupert Murduch media empire for a staggering $ 580 million. It was then that the website started losing users to Facebook.

Six years later, when most MySpace users forgot it existed, Newscorp company got rid of the platform for only 35 million dollars. Interestingly, MySpace still operates today, but only as a site dedicated to music.

Yahoo

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Yahoo was at the heart of the internet. The website offered access to messages, e-mail and an extremely popular search engine. The company was developing dynamically, and it was taking over competitive businesses with huge money. So what went wrong?

The first blow was the burst of the internet stock market bubble in 2001 As a result, Yahoo stock, which was paid $ 119 in January, was worth just $ 4 a few months later.

However, Google turned out to be the proverbial nail in the coffin for Yahoo. The company from Mountain View offered users a better search engine, and then other services, such as Gmail and Google Maps, which further weakened the position of the rival.

Yahoo tried to save itself by escaping forward, but subsequent investments ended up burning out cash. And although the website still exists in 2021, it is only a shadow of its former greatness.