August 04, 2005

Alas, we hardly knew ye This list of seven companies that should have made it in the Internet economy seems a bit lacking to me. What 'net company/service do you miss the most or feel didn't live up to your expectations? For me, it's Kozmo, despite their idiotic business plan and ludicrous expansion attempts. They were the ultimate in (near-) instant gratification. via.
posted by es el Queso 19 years ago
  • I was just thinking about altavista yesterday. I wonder why some of these search engines like alta, webcrawler, hotbox, lycos, and excite jsut gave up. Of course now nearly all (if not all of them) are owned by ovurture (which yahoo now owns apparently). Is it so hard for them to be at least somewhat competitive with google? If so why bother to keep the brands alive? Is there ANYONE who uses one of the old 90's search engines anymore? I miss the original dejanews, although googlegroups is good. I also miss the original ZDTV (before it became Techtv and way before it got bought out by G4).
  • I bought a color Game Boy from Kosmo. They delivered it to me, at work, in probably 20 minutes. I played Ghosts-n-Goblins in my office for the rest of the day and thought about how much I loved living in the future.
  • seems a bit lacking to me I completely agree. What a jejune analysis. I occasionally use Altavista Audio Search. But Alta's far from the angry fruit salad wannabe portal that it was in the nineties following its spinoff from DEC. Of all the many things that Google has done for the search world, putting user interfaces on Jenny Craig is the finest. Even MSN Search is finally getting a clue. Companies I miss? Homegrocer. Damn Webvan to hell for devouring them.
  • i miss homegrocer too i still have the little fridge magnet that came with my first order. i also miss what the web used to be, before all the in your face popups, sidebars and paid search results. example: cnet.com, amazon.com, google etc...
  • I used to like thespark. Sparkmatch in particular was good for hours of brainless entertainment. Now they just make Cliff's Notes.
  • Nothing like lists from ignorance: AltaVista - HotBot was a better search engine, and at least HotBot's parent had a revenue stream. PayPal - doomed to stifle itself as soon as they made the decision to rely on dishonest scamming instead of being honest with customers and investors. Ebay simply removed the need to try to appear honest. WiredNews - any potential to become some sort of major online force is highly arguable (see Salon's struggles) and they're still one of the most original news voices on the web.
  • Nothing like lists from ignorance Please let me rephrase that as 'a desire to assign blame that reads as pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking'.
  • tvtome.com was sucked dry when it was bought out by those motherfukcing shitheads at cnet and become tv.com. Fuck them hard.
  • zombo.com really had potential. activebuyersguide.com really kicked ass and could have been great until target bought it...
  • I miss Webvan. They made two big mistakes: not charging for deliveries (at first), and expanding too much and too soon. Oh, and incredibly complex futuristic stocking mechanisms that didn't outperform some guy in a stockroom but were a thousand times more expensive.
  • I've fond memories of Kozmo as well. CDs, magazines, snacks, electronics and condoms at your fingertips... You can still spot the occasional bike courrier in NYC using recycled Kozmo pouches. Heh, I remember when I first started using Hotbot. In the computer lab at school, I would always get these curious looks. My girlfriend at the time thought I was visiting "Hotbod." And if memory serves me, hotbat.com (one of those silly typos) pulled up this nasty pr0n site (now it's just some crap advertisment drain hole).
  • middleclasstool - Sparkmatch is back in the form of OKCupid.com. Same guys are involved. I miss eGroups, and how my account used to be hacked on a weekly basis and signed up for lists like "Peruvian small dick pics" or "Donkey/Man movies". Personally, I miss MSX, the music industry version of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Not sure why that one didn't stick around for long.
  • Ah Webvan..When they went under, I managed to get a couple of truckloads of those plastic totes they used. Excellent storage bins.
  • Yes, I was shocked when I went to tvtome.com the other day and how crappy it became. Why do companies buy cool sites and then make them crappy? I also forgot about adcritic.com. It was a great source of commercials. I used to show them in class all the time to illistrate points I was trying to make for the day's lesson.
  • I was just thinking about Kozmo the other day, as I ordered something from them the evening before they shut their doors. It may have been one of their final Seattle deliveries! I used Ask Jeeves an awful lot when I first heard about it in the late 90's, as cumbersome and annoying as it was. And by golly, it's still up and running! I'm a little surprised.
  • Am I the only person out there who has always been terrified of Paypal? I looked at it and thought "this was the kind of unregulated banking that caused the Great Depression" well before all the horror stories started.
  • No, you are most definitely not the only person, immlass. "It's like a bank, only they're unregulated! How can I possibly lose!" God almighty, I miss Kozmo. Yes, this list is... curious.
  • Kozmo: movie rentals and Odwalla drinks. Ahh...
  • I miss Launch.com pre-Yahoo. I found so much new music that way, and I loved the interface. Last.fm is slowly approximating the old Launch, but it's still so freaking buggy.
  • Though a bit off the beaten track, I miss the old Siliconinvestor.com. It was once a great stock message board, very active with intelligent comments, and (best of all) not a spam haven the way that Yahoo and Raging Bull boards have become.
  • I miss the old CompuServe dos forums.
  • I miss Mahir. I kiss you!!!!
  • There was a sick (old sch00l sick, not new school) website that had photos of gross decapitations, murders, etc. I really don't like that on a daily basis, but it was like a train wreck: I couldn't turn away. In fact, one post was taken off of the site because it had actual photos taken by a woman and her new boyfriend as they murdered her husband. Why these things were posted on the 'net was a mystery, but it was how the 'net wokred back in the late 90s. Ack. I think my lunch is coming up...
  • I think you're referring to the old rotten.com site. No description other than "exceedingly gross" seemed to fit that site. I visited the site today. Nothing but stories. No pics (or they're hard to find).
  • If you can't find the pics on rotten.com, you really aren't trying hard enough.
  • I miss DEN. Who doesnt love a good gay molestation?
  • Ohhh, I miss Webvan and food.com.
  • I miss the old mp3.com. Back in the boom when they had a pay for play model (i.e. you upload your songs and they pay you a little bit for every download or streaming play you get), every net artist and his grandmother was trying to be the next Trance [] Control. I discovered a ton of sometimes-great, new amateur artists and it was all so conveniently centralized.