Posted on 06/07/2021 4:20:50 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Back in the mid 1990s, the Internet was still a very new thing and not everybody even used a web browser. There were still many using Archie, Gopher, FTP, Telnet, Usenet, etc., and that was only the geeks. Most people had no clue about the online world and if they did, they were using mainstream services like Prodigy (owned by Sears!), CompuServe, and America Online to get that interactive "online" experience (at several dollars an hour on a phone line).
The first browser was called Mosaic and it eventually morphed into Netscape Navigator, both of which are mostly forgotten today. But it did make some guy whose first name is Marc and whose last name is hard to spell a billionaire.
This would have been 1993 or 1994.
Around that time, people were starting to learn about URLs and magazine advertisements started having these curious looking words at the bottom that always began "http://www..."
It was called "The Worldwide Web" by some. But what exactly was the Worldwide Web back in the mid 1990s? Well, it was partly academic type sites with obscure articles on the works of Epicurus (the Greek Philosopher) and also rumination on the deeper meanings of Nirvana and Pearl Jam songs written by pimply faced 17-year-olds. But really, the World Wide Web at the time was this immense wasteland of personal websites in which (mostly) young people posted every minute detail of their insignificant lives which was a precursor to the kind of inane vanity later to be seen on social media sites like MySpace and Facebook.
So that was how things existed on the Internet back in the mid 1990s.
Sidenote: Free Republic would be launched in late 1996 and the HTML has hardly changed!
So around that 1996 timeframe, I was reading my copy of PC Computing (or maybe it was WIRED) and I learned of a website that was selling books! Basically the idea was you browsed the website for a book and if you saw something you liked, you would click on it and purchase it right then and there. You would enter your credit card information right there on the website (an utterly reckless idea at the time) and the book would be delivered right to your house a few days later!
It was only about 25 years ago.
Back then, it was almost sacrilegious to use the "World Wide Web" for commerce. But Amazon did it pretty much first. They quickly expanded their selection to hundreds of thousands of books and not only that, they started posting reviews of said books by people who bought them.
I was addicted from almost Day one. I still remember the very first book I purchased on Amazon. It was "Pillars Of The Earth" by Ken Follett. It arrived just 3 days later in a cardboard box and there were free bookmarks included as well as a letter urging me to review the whole experience on the fledging website that was Amazon.
In quick order, Amazon expanded into music and video as well and it became my go-to site to order music as well and eventually DVDs.
Now Amazon is the "everything store" and if I want to order a box of Bronze #9 x 2.25 wood screws, why I can have them in my mailbox by Thursday. Ditto for that weird looking piece that will fix my dishwasher (if I guessed the right part).
Yeah, I know most people here hate Amazon today. And I did cancel my Amazon Prime when AWS helped to shut down the Parler site earlier this year. But that was one hell of a company back in the day. Customer service was impeccable. I remember ordering a set of Bach Cantatas and one of the discs was duplicated (meaning I was missing one of the CDs). Amazon immediately sent me an entire new set (never even asking for the old set back) and giving me a $10 gift card for future purchases along with a letter of apology.
Anyway, I did like Amazon back in the day.
My stepfather passed on buying McDonalds for $10.00 a share...At the time he told me,they were at $100.00 a share...I asked why he didn’t take the chance and he said ,he didn’t think they could come back from their slump....
Every once in awhile I’ll see a long line of Amazon delivery vehicles go by. Makes me wonder what that is all about.
The thing that makes me deal with it,is even ROSS PEROT passed on GOOGLE.Some interviewer asked him why,and he said he didn’t know what to do with it....The early stages of Google....
I agree. The most frustrating thing about Amazon is I want to deny them business - in large part because of WaPo - but can’t because they provide a tremendous amount of value that is impossible to ignore. You just can’t do without. Even worse - I resisted becoming a Prime member for a long time - joining and cancelling several times. Now I am back to being a Prime member again. Amazon is how many men look at women : you can’t live with them. You can’t live without them.
I’m old enough to remember when Amazon was just a river in South America…
...and they didn’t have to collect sales tax from you on account of they were a poor widdl’ internet company struggling to make ends meet.
Back in the day, music videos were made solely for the purpose of promoting record sales. They were considered as an EXPENSE by the recording industry.
Nowadays those promotional videos are the cash cows of the recording industry. Nobody buys records anymore but they sure do stream a lot of videos!
Amazon was given a pass because they were internet only. Amazon was able to pass on the 5-10% discount to their customers knowing most customers wouldn't go through the trouble of calculating the sales tax they owed and sending it to the state tax collector.
I had the Nile running through South America. Yes, I had to go after school for some help.
I remember email on bitnet taking 5 minutes to travel from the midwest to upstate new york. Every node it passed through gave you a report of its progress. This was 1987.
Their website is very very user friendly; and it has everything you need to make decisions. No business does it better. Amazon has spoiled me.
I also remember dating someone in the mid 1990’s and telling her I altavista’ed her. She said the same to me. Back then if you said you checked someone out on the internet you were considered a stalker but it was ok as we were both geeks.
I had a 12 baud modem with a turbo boost up to 14bauds.
Yes, and I was telling everyone to buy Apple at $12 a share in the weeks leading up to their jump to $72 in three days. There was a years long 'tradition' of the San Jose Mercury News talking down Apple, just before the stock jumped. In mid 1996 (?) they were at it again.
I didn't have the guts to follow my own advice.
Remember Netscape trying to sue Microsoft over the browser included in the OS and I think they won. Where is netscape? The window into the world wasn’t important, the world was important.
Younger people have no idea what we had to go through.
But back then, we were thankful just to have an Internet.
I, too, ordered from Amazon in the early days. I would look at their on-line catalog and call them up to place the order.
I began to order tea from Stash, “A World of Tea”, around the same time. Maybe even before Amazon.
I bought a Mac in late 1992, and my employer, GTE, allowed employees to use the company’s servers as an ISP. Stash and Amazon were the first internet commerce sites I found, and possibly the only ones for a short time.
The selection and convenience was decisive.
Anyone else remember the “Whole Earth” Catalog?
Precursor to Amazon.
.
Dang! I remember black & white TV.....both stations!
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