What the Internet Was Like in 1995
The year 1995 was a turning point in terms of both culture and technological feat. It was the year when the 1990s were finally manifesting in a way that embraced the future—by creating a distinct identity that, ironically, focused on escaping the present toward something even more advanced and forward thinking. This was channeled quite literally through a booming technology called the internet. By becoming more connected to the world, people were now more easily able to escape it. They could create their own subcultures and communities from people across the globe, all curated from the exact keywords and niche interests they were searching for.
The internet was no longer this experimental, underground technology reserved for governmental and educational use. In 1995, the internet was now mainstream, a household name. Now this series of events was not something that occurred in a vacuum. Several factors—in the digital and real worlds, and in the growing home computer industry—allowed the internet to boom at the time and place that it did. And today we’re gonna dive right into what the internet was like in 1995. First, let’s look at where the internet was back in the early 90s; quite literally at the very beginning. In 1990, Tim Burners Lee was putting together a working system for an idea he proposed to CERN the year before; he called his invention the “World Wide Web.” As you know,
the internet is a giant network of computers that rely on protocols to communicate with each other. Since its inception, these computers used various types of software which simplified this communication. The World Wide Web was one of them, and it was a revolutionary one. Rather than using often intimidating, terminal-like interfaces like with Newsgroups or Internet Relay Chat, the World Wide Web showed information through things called “websites,” where you could navigate between pages using hyperlinks or address names that were easy to remember. This made accessing the internet not only easy, but also fun, and as computer technology got better, the World Wide Web’s capabilities would become more flexible. Because of its convenience and how small the learning curve for it was, the World Wide Web became standard for using the internet and eventually became synonymous with the term itself. You accessed this information on the World
Wide Web through something called a web-browser; it essentially acted as a translator for displaying this particular set of data. The most popular browsers at the time included ViolaWWW and Mosaic. But in 1995, a new web browser wa rapidly growing in popularity and would eventually dominate its competitors: Netscape Navigator. What made this browser revolutionary was that it was much faster than the other ones based on how it was designed, particularly with handling images.
You see, browsers at the time typically would download images sequentially whenever someone accessed a page, whereas Netscape would load download all the images at the same time before displaying the page. Netscape also supported more image formats! Web browsers before typically only supported GIF files. Sorry, I mispronounced that, JIF files! Whereas Netscape also added support for something called the JPEG. It was much smaller and although required more power to decompress them,
this would soon change as computer hardware improved. Additionally, Netscape allowed you to access parts of a page that already loaded even if the full page hasn’t finished yet. In short, these things made Netscape feel like a quicker and easier to navigate browser for the user. But 1995 was a milestone year for not just the company, but the internet as a whole: Netscape enters the stock market; they are now a publicly traded company. The World
Wide Web was no longer just this niche thing that only tech nerds were using; it was a household name. Netscape submitted its initial public offer on August 9, 1995, and it was incredibly successful. It would officially be the start of something called the “dot-com” bubble and its success on Wall Street only further increased its exposure.
Then another thing happened in 1995 that helped them even more! You have the launch of Windows 95. Although it was by no means the first operating system to support access to the World Wide Web, it was definitely the first to market it to everyday people in a fun way, which introduced them to the internet as a concept for the very first time. Take a look at the advertisements for previous Windows versions like 3.1; you can tell that they are much more focused on the
“office and workplace” demographic over anything else. Compare that to these ads for Windows 95; they are targeting “everyone,” which is very much a high risk, high reward approach in marketing, but it came out at the perfect time and place that allowed it to flourish! Windows 95: Where do you want to go today? So not only was the web browser easy to use, but so was the computer itself that it was running on! Naturally, all this public promotion made 1995 the year of the internet’s mass adoption. According to a study by Times Mirror Center, the number of Americans subscribed to an internet service provider rose from 5 million in 1994 to 12 million in 1995, over double! But despite this huge increase in internet usage, that didn’t mean there weren’t still people who were a bit…intimidated by it. The concept of using a website, let alone a computer at home was
still new for a lot of people, and they wanted to be confident about its environment before fully committing to an ISP subscription. So, an intermediate service was starting to see a ton of popularity at this time as well: internet cafes. This basically gave people a chance to test drive the internet! They could spend a couple bucks to surf the net for a couple hours while enjoying a cup of coffee. It required very little monetary and time investment and was even marketed as a
recreational, fun activity, which only made the internet as a concept more exciting to everyday people. It was also a great bridge between the affairs of real life, and all the things that were happening in the cyberspace, making it less parasocial than it arguably is today. As Stewart Cheifet of the Internet Chronicles put it, at Internet Cafes, “you get the best of both worlds: real people and virtual people.” You also had public libraries that provided computers with internet access free of charge! Though of course, these were typically used in more of an educational, research context, which was different from the more recreational, social environment of internet cafes. But regardless,
people were learning more about the internet every day, and actually getting to use it! Once they became familiar with it, they were confident enough in getting started on an Internet Service Provider plan, like America Online! “You’ve got mail!” What made AOL so popular compared to other already existing ISPs like CompuServe was once again, it’s friendly and warm energy; it was marketed as the ISP for people who didn’t know how to use computers, whereas these other providers were already well established within the experienced tech community. They also would give out free-trial CDs to the service, giving people a convenient taste of what the internet was like, and when they were ready to buy it, they could just remember that 3-letter company! Well in 1995, AOL did something quite remarkable. They acquired a company called WebCrawler. If you’ve seen my video on search engines, you would know that WebCrawler was basically the first search engine to become insanely popular among typical people and was one of the first to provide full text search; keep in mind this was before Google. But given that AOL was already a well-known company at this point, their acquisition of WebCrawler further increased the search engine’s traffic by association. Now, people who were
just getting started on the internet and only knew about AOL.com now had a sort of jumping off point. They could search for anything. Because before search engines, you had these websites that were basically directories of other websites sorted by category. The most popular one
was a site called Yahoo. “YAHOO!” But now that AOL’s website already had a similar setup and now even had a search engine on top of that, it was creating some good competition for Yahoo. So, also in 1995, Yahoo search is introduced. Although this was a little bit before AOL’s purchase of WebCrawler, it was clear that at this point the World Wide Web was undergoing this big change to adapt to average consumers, and so Yahoo had to act fast anyway. 1995 was the year for search engines,
their first time in the mainstream spotlight. Now that navigating this seemingly infinite cyberspace was easier than ever before, it facilitated as well as incentivized more people to create their own webpages as well. Greetings and Salutations! Welcome to the World Wide Web! Or www for short…even though it takes more time to say the acronym—anyway. Today,
I am going to navigate you through the basics of creating your very own website! You know, I just can’t stand HTML. It is the snake to my mongoose…or the mongoose to my snake. Either way it’s bad. I don’t know animals, but don’t be intimidated. Now it is quick and easy, thanks to Squarespace! Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder that lets you create a page that’s All That and a Bag of Chips! It is the place for everybody, whether you’re looking to start a cyber-business or just want to write love letters to Bob Dole…but of course I wouldn’t do that. Squarespace uses cutting-edge design tools to provide you award-winning templates that are based on your preferences, profession, and personality! You can also go in and add your own creative spin to these pages, and make any kind of changes you want. With Squarespace’s payment portal, you can also sell your own products and services to all your site’s visitors, even those who live internationally. Right now, I’m selling stock shares from a company called Enron! Just refinanced my house, I really think it’s got potential! And right now, you can get started on a free trial at squarespace.com and then head to squarespace.com/nationsquid to get
10% off any purchase of a website or domain name. Don’t go there, girlfriend! Check out Squarespace. In 1995, “Beverly Hills Internet” sees a huge rise in popularity. This website would soon be known by its original name, GeoCities, and it was revolutionary in that it made building your own website easy; you no longer had to be a skilled programmer to do it. Now,
GeoCities no longer exists…which is why you should check out Squarespace! But GeoCities popularized something in the web-design space called WYSIWYG. This stands for “What You See Is What You Get” and it sounds like what you’re thinking. It means that the interface that you are working with looks the same as the finished product. For example, when you traditionally designed a website,
you would just see a bunch of lines of code within the interface. You didn’t actually see what the page looked like until you pressed the “preview” button or even published it. Instead of working with lines of code, WYSIWYG allows you to literally click and drag buttons onto the page and build your website that way; what you are seeing is what you are going to get when its done! And here was the kicker…GeoCities was free! The company made its money through banner advertising. So, in 1995, people who hardly even used a computer the year before were now creating their own websites, with their own personality, for the entire world to see, at any time. It was the year where the internet was becoming part of daily life, pretty much every facet of daily life. People were finding more ways to virtualize real-life, essential routines. Just
before this internet boom, in August of 1994, the very first online order from a restaurant is made. Pizza Hut created a website called PizzaNet, a test project put together in Santa Cruz, California which allowed nearby customers to order online from their local Pizza Hut restaurant. It was a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and extra cheese! By 1995, people saw the incredible potential such an idea had, and waiter.com was born. Known more at this time as World Wide Waiter, it allowed for restaurants to opt in and use their own employees to make food deliveries to their customers. It was basically an early version of UberEats or Postmates, except there was no middleman or third party workers. The delivery people were actually employed by the restaurant.
It was basically no different from before where people would place in delivery orders by phone, except this time it was easier and more convenient because now they could do it at their computer! “I love you guys! How about a complimentary squeegee!” “No thanks. We just ordered Chinese.” [Exasperated sigh] People at this time were buying other things online as well: like entertainment and knowledge. On July 16, 1995, what would soon become the first successful online bookstore, had left its prototype phase and officially launched to the public: the website was called Amazon. Not only did it have a wide selection of books to choose from, the pricing was competitive, and the webpage itself was easy to use. In fact, part of the site’s charm was
its comforting presence to the user, which would only grow more apparent over time. Their business model would allow them to expand and flourish beyond just books; it was the hub for all your e-commerce needs. In fact, their warm approach reflected this in their new logo, an arrow which not only resembles a smile, but shows their wide variety of products from A to Z! You are loved. Yeah, did you know that you could put love on the internet as well? Match.com launches this
same year as the first ever dating site. “Hey, ladies. I like long walks on the beach. I like Slipknot…(LAUGH) That’s a 90s reference—you wouldn’t understand. I also like Apple.com, which has seen significant developments in its functionality compared to the year prior! In its humble beginnings, it was realty just a mundane, plain page with hypertext and dull colors. But now that the internet entered public consciousness, oh,
it was time for Apple to show everyone what they were made of. This page contained nice colors, buttons and graphics that were quite flashy at the time, and an easy way to navigate all the basic things you needed to know about the company! Then of course, in 1995, you see the launch of a website that really signifies that this was going to be the turning point of technology: a site called MSN.com. Short for Microsoft Network, MSN was Microsoft’s answer to AOL. They basically mirrored AOL’s business model, creating their own dial-up service with their own proprietary software. And that’s the key word here: proprietary. You see, during the early days of AOL, it operated as something called a “walled garden.” This means that when you set up America Online on your computer, the AOL program that you would run on your computer after dialing into your modem only provided you access to AOL services and AOL approved websites, not the entirety of the world wide web. This meant you couldn’t access websites like Yahoo within the AOL-sphere,
which made competition even more difficult. The only way you could access these non-AOL websites was to get an independent web-browser like Netscape. Think of it as the 90s version of the App store. When you on an iPhone, you’re not forced to use the App store all the time; but it is highly encouraged and the system is designed to always incentivize you to download an Apple-certified app for your needs. AOL essentially did the same thing with the World Wide
Web. You could use AOL’s network infrastructure to access these outside websites using third-party browsers; they just didn’t exactly advertise that, and a person who has no knowledge of computers is not gonna know the difference, and is just gonna assume that AOL is “the internet.” Now you might be wondering, why would AOL do this? Why wouldn’t they just make the AOL program just have access to all these websites? Well, for a few reasons: one, it made using the internet more simplified for new people and put them all in one familiar place. Two, before innovative browsers like Netscape were popular, the odds of a webpage loading properly were lower, so being in an environment highly surveillance by AOL made things more technically stable. And three,) it gave AOL the opportunity to promote more of their brand and therefore make more money.
But by 1995, this “closed off system” was starting to become a problem, and that’s when MSN enters the picture…enters it rather late. You see, AOL’s walled garden technique was becoming antiquated in 1995, but they were able to get away with doing it because they came from a time where that was still acceptable; people were just used to it. Also, it was already the standard online service provider at the time, so people just tolerated it while using another browser. MSN, however, didn’t seem to be much different from AOL, providing a lot of the same products and services as AOL. So, a lot of people saw it as an attempt from Microsoft to gain control of the internet, especially this late in the game. The main advantages MSN had going for it was that it came bundled with Windows 95, meaning all you had to do was sign up for your subscription without having to install anything. It was also the homepage of a new web browser created by Microsoft
for Windows 95: Internet Explorer. So, in addition to many pioneering services and ideas for how the world should be interconnected, 1995 was also the year where the “Browser Wars” would officially begin. Now this is a non-exhaustive list of all the remarkable things that the internet introduced in 1995; I could go on and on. But this all shows that this year was a watershed moment not just for technology, but for culture. The Nineties, heck, the future was going to forever be different. Whether it would be for better or for worse was uncertain; the only thing we could do was explore it together, just like the vastness of this newfound information superhighway.
If you would like to learn more about how the internet was actually built, you can check out my video on that here. A special thanks to my Patreon supporters: Patreon.com/NationSquid. You can also E-Buy Me a Coffee or a Pizza through PizzaNet. I’m gonna go—thank you for watching everyone.
2025-05-15 00:42
