In 1994, Jeff Bezos founded a company in his Seattle garage that would change the world forever. Started as a young, dynamic Internet company called “Amazon”, it is now one of the most valuable brands in the world, with annual sales in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

In its early days, Amazon was just an online bookseller. However, Bezos quickly recognized the possibilities of the internet and the enormous potential for online trading. He began adding more product categories – from electronics and toys to clothing and groceries. The company survived the “dot-com bubble” of the early 2000s while many of its competitors failed. This was largely due to Bezos’ astute business strategies and his ability to adapt to changing market conditions.

The White House website was launched in 1994 and was one of the first government websites on the Internet. The site offered information about the United States government, press releases, executive orders and more. The White House website was an important step in digitizing the work of government and improving communication between government and citizens. Today it is a central information point for everything related to the US government.

The launch of the White House website was a strong signal that the Internet had become a serious means of communication. It helped pave the way for the many government and agency websites we know today.

In 1994, when the Internet was still in its infancy, two Stanford students developed Jerry Yang and David Filo, a website called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web“. In a short time, this website was rebranded as Yahoo – an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle”. What originally started as a hobby project developed into one of the first internet giants and one of the most well-known brands worldwide.

The site quickly became one of the most visited in the world, turning its founders into multi-millionaires. However, the good times didn’t last forever. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Yahoo began to struggle. A few failed acquisitions and an inability to keep up with new players like Google and later Facebook led to a long period of decline.

The Internet Movie Database, better known as IMDb, has been online since 1993 and was one of the first comprehensive databases on the Internet. It provided a platform for film lovers to find and share information about their favorite films and series.

From its humble beginnings as a film buff’s hobby project, IMDb has grown into an indispensable resource for film and television enthusiasts around the world.

“Doctor Fun” was the first webcomic to be published on the Internet. Created by David Farley, the comic ran from 1993 to 2006 and as such has witnessed many of the technological changes and advances of the internet. Doctor Fun’s cartoons were whimsical and humorous, characterized by a unique sense of humor and distinctive drawing style. Doctor Fun was early evidence that the Internet can also be a place for entertainment and creativity.

Today there are thousands of webcomics available in every imaginable style and subject matter. But Doctor Fun will always be first – the webcomic that paved the way for everyone else.

Although the website is no longer operational today, here is a little more about the history of this site

“The Tech”, the oldest and largest newspaper of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was one of the first newspapers to make it onto the Internet. It has been online since 1993 and offers an extensive catalog of articles from over 130 years of publication. In the early days of the internet, news and newspapers were not as ubiquitous as they are today. However, The Tech recognized the signs of the times early on and used the value of the Internet as a means of communication.

Today it is almost unthinkable to have a newspaper without an online edition. In many respects, The Tech was a pioneer and paved the way for today’s digital media.

In 1993, Bloomberg launched their website as one of the first commercial sites on the Internet. They offered financial news and market data, a completely new concept at the time. They pioneered the delivery of real-time financial information and laid the groundwork for numerous imitators. Today, Bloomberg.com remains a heavyweight in the financial information world. The site has of course evolved since the beginning and now also offers analysis, commenting and other features.

Although today’s website bears little resemblance to the original version, Bloomberg remains a good example of how commercial websites early shaped the Internet and changed the face of modern business.

In 1992, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) website went online. It was home to the Mosaic web browser, the first widely used web browser capable of displaying images. A true breakthrough that revolutionized the surfing experience! The NCSA website itself was a simple affair, with information about the Mosaic browser and other projects at the center.

It’s fascinating to see how such a nondescript website could help change the face of the internet so drastically. Mosaic was the forerunner of Netscape Navigator and thus grandfather of all modern browsers including Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC for short, hosted the second website in the world. It was originally intended to provide research results and information for physicists. At that time, this simple, text-based site was a milestone in the communication of science and research. The website is still active today and serves as a valuable resource for the global physics community.

SLAC’s website is a shining example of the visionary power of scientists who saw the Internet not only as a technological innovation, but also as a tool for knowledge sharing and the advancement of science and research.

It all started with the “World Wide Web Project“. This website, created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland, was the first ever website and is still online. The website was originally intended to disseminate information about the WWW project itself and to be a contact point for anyone interested in the project.

Imagine: At that time, the entire Internet world consisted of just this one website! The World Wide Web Project is not only a historical relic, but also a document of human progress. The website represents the launching pad for the unprecedented information and communications technology explosion we are witnessing today.

Of course, significantly more websites were founded in the respective years. Because the 1990s were the decade in which the potential of the Internet was recognized and used by many of the pioneers mentioned here. Many of the sites founded back then no longer exist today, or have merged with other companies and now have a completely different name under which they work.

The top ten list that we have presented here is just an individual selection of the websites that have been around the longest and that also have the highest level of awareness. But maybe you thought like us that the “oldest websites” are actually (at the time of this writing 2023) not that old when you look back. The speed with which everything has developed so far and the possibilities that we are already using today are only a small preview of what awaits us in the future.