The web in 1996

Back in 1996 the web was in its infancy; people referred to the new technology by its full name – the World Wide Web – and connected to it by noisy modems, tying up the phone line as they did. A page took minutes to load (using Internet Explorer 3.0), and you paid for your internet connection annually, as well as by the hour!

Google was just an idea in 1996 – a research project by Larry Page – and Yahoo! was king of the search engines. When you searched for a site on Yahoo!, you searched a directory of websites that was built by real humans; Yahoo! employees would painstakingly review submissions and rank them manually.

1996 is also when BFI was born – originally as Big Fish internet. A bit like looking fondly through old computer games of the 80’s, we take a look through the websites of 1996 and marvel at how far we’ve all come: