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20 websites that changed the world

techradar.com — The sites that revolutionised the way we lead our lives

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 10, 2008

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  • FDisk, on 10/10/2008, -12/+127Google anyone?
  • jedthehumanoid, on 10/10/2008, -14/+91Yahoo was the pioneer that Google followed, which is why Yahoo is in the list and Google isn't
  • StevenBullen, on 10/10/2008, -7/+53Yeah but the title states 'websites that changed the world'.
    Google did change the world. I dont ever say I will yahoo that... Doh!
  • Frost9999, on 10/10/2008, -1/+47what's the url? I'll look it up.
  • motang, on 10/10/2008, -4/+37First ever website, created by internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee.
    GeoCities
    Blogger
    Yahoo!
    The internet-connected coffee machine
    Danni's Hard Drive
    MP3.com
    eBay
    Amazon
    Boo.com
    Wikipedia
    Slashdot
    The Drudge Report
    YouTube
    Gabocorp
    Legal & General
    Hotmail
    Classmates.com
    Match.com
    HotWired
  • rodon, on 10/10/2008, -0/+32what?!?! no goatse.cx?!?!?

    That site changed the lives of millions of people, for worse.
  • wontstoptalking, on 10/10/2008, -4/+25I wish Yahoo isn't just a junkie website now. I mean, they have some good services, like Answers and all that stuff, but the actual site is no good now.


    It's a grandma site.
  • feenstrovski, on 10/10/2008, -4/+24However Google Is in my opinion the single website that changed the way we see the internet today. Google has become a household word which to some is synonymous to internet. If It weren't for Google my mother wouldn't use the internet.

    Gmail, Google ads , Google maps, Google Video, Pagemaker and the list goes on of things it has introduced to shape the small things we do daily.

    Yahoo was just another search engine, not to say it didn't do well.
  • mywhitenoise, on 10/10/2008, -3/+22How the hell is myspace not on there?
    As much as I hate myspace you can't deny it's popularity and influence on the world.
  • inactive, on 10/10/2008, -0/+19If it wasn't for 4Chan and Something Awful, there would be no memes.
  • MrZaiko, on 10/10/2008, -1/+17Classmates.com??? WTF
  • trafficlight, on 10/10/2008, -0/+14For me, Geocities was the most important site of all time.

    I was 13 at the time when I realized that I could make my own web pages. What an amazing revelation! My first job was helping on the local newspaper's website. So, Geocities definitely affected me directly.
  • MakiMaki, on 10/10/2008, -5/+19Dear Techrader.com, did you really have to split this article into 5 pages? You seem to needlessly divide your stories into multiple pages when they are clearly short enough to be on 1 or 2 pages.
  • coldkill3r, on 10/10/2008, -0/+12@JoeCool1986

    Ask Jeves...what else would you use?
  • hundalz, on 10/10/2008, -2/+14Very informative article. I've used some of them over the years and yes - they were a paradigm shift in their respective sectors. Maybe craigslist should be there as well for kicking off the classifieds ?
  • Stavrosian, on 10/10/2008, -0/+10It was a crappy service with nowhere near enough bandwidth and ***** design (the frames. Oh god, the frames...), but the idea of free hosting of a website for anybody who wanted it was a pretty big deal. Like many pioneers, it isn't really important how well it did its job - just that it paved the way for others. The first successful attempt to give a website to the masses is worth remembering.
  • Stavrosian, on 10/10/2008, -1/+11Er...it's on one page for me.
  • kkl3218, on 10/10/2008, -1/+11geocities...? really!?!
  • benologist, on 10/10/2008, -0/+8There are much bigger forums than digg, and if you think digg's having any influence on the election why isn't Ron Paul president by now?
  • MrZaiko, on 10/10/2008, -0/+8I treated classmates.com like spam. When the internet was the world of free *****, classmates charged you $$ for getting in touch with douchebags you knew in highschool.

    and this is better than google??
  • jvincent08, on 10/10/2008, -0/+7Right, and the Internet has had no affect on the world.
  • CobaltBlue, on 10/10/2008, -0/+6I love reading questions on Yahoo Answers. The naive people thinking that they will get their three page term papers written for them for 10 worthless points is very heartwarming.
  • ShoggothDreams, on 10/10/2008, -0/+6That and others were obvious advertisers.
  • vsujohn2, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5When it first was popular it was several pages.
  • smackjack, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5Check under Slashdot
  • yetAnotherCroc, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5Man those were the days. My first experience with the internet was in 94. My family was the first In our circle of friends that had it at home. I never realized it but it was empty back then. Approx 100 000 sites all in all. I spent a lot of time on yahoo chat and searching for stuff on altavista. Doing any kind of fact research in my native language was doomed to failure. Online shopping was only a rumored vision for the future. Heck, frames and Java was the latest in web tech and noone had even heard of the concept of CSS yet. Then the floodgates opened, regular people came online and webcomunities started forming. It's gone downhill from there. Neverending september indeed.
  • nem3sis, on 10/10/2008, -1/+6no suprnova and thepiratebay there...?
  • djdole, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5Yes geocities!
    While pretty lame now, it was HUGE in the mid '90s.
    Remember, Olympic triathlon runners must first learn to walk. Same goes for technology.
  • vsujohn2, on 10/10/2008, -1/+6Dear most ad-revenue based internet sites....., *what MakiMaki said*
  • fwertz, on 10/10/2008, -1/+6Well, then, Yahoo indirectly changed the world by having a sphere of influence on google.

    Whatever, google is still way better.
  • nealparr, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5This is bogus. No MySpace or any of its predecessors like Friendster?
  • waldo686, on 10/10/2008, -0/+5the election's not until november duh!
  • c4nn1bu5, on 10/11/2008, -0/+4Anyone else remember angelfire?
  • dagnew, on 10/10/2008, -1/+5Yes, Yahoo pioneered attempting to organize the web, but Google HAS organized it. Yahoo tried with rooms of people, Google used algorithms. I haven't yet looked at the list, but if G isn't on there, the article is wrong, plain and simple!
  • dtrocchio, on 10/10/2008, -0/+4napster wasn't a website, it was an app...
  • roxgod666, on 10/10/2008, -0/+4Too bad that's not what the list is about
  • ahpro, on 10/10/2008, -0/+4If youtube wasn't here, we'd probably still have google video where you don't have proper accounts, the videos take a few days to get verified, there's absolutely no copyrighted content allowed and there's practically no community,
  • gasin, on 10/10/2008, -4/+8no craigslist?!!
  • RobotBuddha, on 10/10/2008, -0/+4It might not seem that way to a lot of us, but 1995 was a pretty long time ago. I do remember the world of the late 80s, and it's amazing how things have changed. The world is so much smaller, and it's all because of the internet. I actually remember when someone had bragging rights if they were talking to someone in another country. Information exchange was incredibly slow as a result of all that. It was hard for an individual to fact check anything, and "because we said so" was about the start and end of getting news. You couldn't easily find out what reports other people were getting outside your own little community. Seriously, the internet really has changed the way society works.
  • toxicityj, on 10/10/2008, -2/+6***** you! Two of my friends died trying to come up with a non-4chan/SA meme.
  • jvincent08, on 10/10/2008, -0/+4Yahoo was the first major search engine. Google came later.
  • ScaryUK, on 10/11/2008, -0/+4bbc.co.uk made a big impact... bbc.com is just a re-direct for those without the nouse to know about .co.uk!
  • redwallhp, on 10/11/2008, -0/+4It was big before you were born...
  • djdole, on 10/10/2008, -0/+3Note: "changed the world"
    MySpace is no more than a glorified Blogger/Craigslist ghetto-born bastard-child. :-p

    ...Facebook is a step up...but still hasn't made an impact...yet.
  • JoeCool1986, on 10/10/2008, -1/+4look it up with what?
  • 032483, on 10/10/2008, -0/+3Dugg for Danni Ashe.
  • TheDreadDiggerD, on 10/10/2008, -0/+3The phrase "web 2.0" is exactly why those aren't on the list.
  • duerra, on 10/10/2008, -0/+3Yeah, they made a few mistakes with this list. First, Google absolutely should have been on the list, because they completely revolutionized search as we know it. Secondly, MySpace absolutely needs to be on that list for revolutionizing social networking. Other than that, they're not terribly far off. IMHO, Yahoo should have been ranked much higher than 4th (1st or 2nd, IMHO), so I'm taking this ordering with a grain of salt.
  • stuffradio, on 10/10/2008, -1/+4That's your opinion too :)
  • inactive, on 10/10/2008, -0/+3what about whitehouse.com ? I discovered porn on the net by visiting it... so did a whole bunch of others lol.
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