11 Popular Websites From the 90s That Are Still Active Today

From its humble beginnings at CERN, the World Wide Web has come a long way since it was first invented in 1989. Surprisingly, there are some websites from the 90s that are still active today.

 

11. CERN

 

Founded in September 1954 in Geneva, Switzerland, CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is also home to the world's largest particle physics laboratory.

The CERN website is the world's first website and therefore the oldest website online. It was actually created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while he was working on the World Wide Web at CERN. Visit the page to see a live, recreated version of the original CERN website.

10. World Wide Web Virtual Library

 

As its name suggests, the World Wide Web Virtual Library is a virtual source of information on a number of topics. One of the first websites of the early 90s, it was the world's first index of content anywhere on the World Wide Web.

It was also developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. To this day, the website is still active and retains its original look, although it was last updated in February 2017.

9. DrgnSlyr's Star Trek: The Ultimate Links

Many people love fan sites. There's nothing sweeter than seeing someone really passionate about a book, movie, or show and wanting to create a website dedicated to it. DrgnSlyr's Star Trek: The Ultimate Links is one such site.

It has a bunch of Star Trek resources, like casts from every series (stopping at Enterprise), starship images, and episode lists. You'll also find a few pages summarizing Internet use in the 90s via DrgnSlyr's Favorite Links Page .

8. WebCrawler.com

 

Like ALIWEB, Webcrawler.com was launched in 1994. It was also the first search engine to offer full-text search and is one of the oldest examples of a search engine.

Created by Brian Pinkerton, Webcrawler.com is a more powerful search engine than ALIWEB, but still no match for Google and Bing. The site still has that unforgettable 90s feel.

7. The Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a famous art, science, and technology museum located at Piers 15 and 17 in San Francisco. The museum was founded by Frank Oppenheimer and opened in 1969 in the Palace of Fine Arts.

As one of the first museums to go online and now one of the oldest websites on the Internet, the Exploratorium has undergone a complete overhaul and now features a modern, intuitive website design.

6. San Francisco FogCam

 

Maybe webcams aren't as cool as they used to be, but imagine yourself in the 90s, when the Internet wasn't what it is today and webcams were still finding their place. So head to the San Francisco FogCam, a museum that's been open since 1994.

The FogCam takes a photo of the University of San Francisco every 20 seconds. Its resolution is just 320 x 200 pixels. For comparison, 4K has nearly 8.3 million pixels, while the San Francisco FogCam has just 64,000 pixels. Even today's cheapest smartphones can take better photos.

5. Bloomberg

By 1993, there were only a handful of websites available worldwide. By the end of that year, Bloomberg had joined the ranks of innovative companies with a corporate website.

Founded in 1981, Bloomberg went online in 1993 and to this day, the company remains online using its website as one of its channels for providing financial services, software, and other business services.

4. arXiv

arXiv, pronounced archive, is an online preprint service that gives you free access to over 2 million scientific papers in the fields of computer science, economics, electrical engineering and systems science, mathematics, physics, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics.

Launched on August 14, 1991, arXiv is one of the oldest websites still online. Supported by Cornell University, arXiv allows authors to submit their scholarly works for free. Similar to Wikipedia, the site also welcomes donations from the public and organizations to help maintain the site.

 

3. IMDb

The Internet Movie Database is a fan-run movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies". Originally an early 90s site, it is now one of the largest online databases of movie information, cast and crew, etc.

The original IMDb website was launched in 1993 in the early days of the Internet and was hosted by the computer science department of Cardiff University, Wales. IMDb is now an Amazon company and has a modern website design.

2. Dole/Kemp Campaign Site

You can still visit Bob Dole's campaign website today. It's a brief piece of American history, considering most of the links still work.

There were press releases, speeches, and even updates covering the election results. Unfortunately, the ads are no longer available, but you can still read summaries of each ad. You can find campaign ads on YouTube.

1. MTV

Launched in August 1981, MTV is one of the most iconic and popular music television brands that dominated the airwaves in the 80s and 90s. Its domain has been registered by VJ Adam Curry since 1993.

MTV's website was active and even more active these days. Using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, you can go back in time and see a mirror image of what MTV's website looked like in the early 90s. You can also use it to see what many 90s websites looked like in the past, and there are other tools for viewing older versions of websites.

After looking at all these 90s websites, you'll be disappointed that the Internet is no longer what it used to be. Most websites today are too homogeneous. While many people like a simple user interface, they also appreciate a website that is designed based on instinct rather than maximizing traffic.