Before They Were Famous
Today's biggest sites all started small. Each exhibit here shows one of them as it first looked, with a picture from the time.
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Then: google.stanford.edu in November 1998, still copyright Stanford, promising an index 'soon to be much bigger' BackRub: Google before it was Google
Google was first called BackRub, a 1996 Stanford project named after the back links it counted. How a dorm-room search engine became Google.
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Then: minecraft.net five days after the first public test: 'Nothing here yet!' Minecraft Classic: the browser game that started it all
The first Minecraft was a free browser game released in May 2009, later renamed Minecraft Classic. Here's how it began, and how you can still play it.
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Then: Thefacebook eight days after launch, open only to Harvard TheFacebook: the 2004 version
In 2004 Facebook was thefacebook.com: Harvard first, plain and blue, with a poke nobody could explain. What it looked like, and how it grew.