The World Wide Web is such a young medium that many of the best sites from its earliest days are still very much still with us, such as Yahoo (founded in 1994), Amazon.com (1994), CNET (1994), eBay (1995). and Salon.com (1995). It’s a little as if I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Milton Berle Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Huntley/Brinkley were all on the air in 2008.
But for every site that’s been lucky enough to have a long and happy existence, there have been countless ones whose lives were cut short. Sometimes their deaths were huge stories; sometimes they quietly fizzled away. And even though many of their untimely passings were self-inflicted, it’s still worth celebrating the fact that they existed at all.