Pictures from Netscape in the mid 90s

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I used to work for compaq in the 90s. What I remember most was how excited we were every time a new model came out that was faster than the last. Then MMX came out, and everyone was talking about how that was going to revolutionize computing.

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lordpbrian@reddit

We had two Presarios. I miss those bad boys :( Such good times

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No_Boysenberry4825@reddit

The other day I was thinking about how computing was just so much more exciting in the 90s. It’s not just nostalgia goggles. It felt like something amazing was going to happen to society. We were so enamoured with this new thing, it was like this secret club that everybody was trying to get into.

Every time you logged on, there was some fascinating thing that you could explore. And that’s still true today, perhaps even more so. But the wonder and amazement is definitely gone.

I think if four companies hadn’t of monopolized it, that wonder and excitement would still be there.

I still sort of get that feeling when I log into pirate torrent sites of all places. They still have that feel from 20 years ago.

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fakeaccount572@reddit

I remember vividly getting my first home computer (of my own, I had a TI994A with my parents) - a Compaq Presario 4402 all-in-one from Incredible Universe in 1996.

I got it, unboxed it, plugged it into the phone line, signed up for whatever plan it was to get a connection, opened Netscape - and sat there.

I had no idea what to type to look for. The first thing I could think of was www.madonna.com It worked, and what a weird place it was...

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Tall-Introduction414@reddit

The first thing I remember doing was using a search engine called Webcrawler (in Lynx) to look up Mortal Kombat codes and Street Fighter 2 moves. Then I printed them out and took them to school.

Ah, 1994. What a year.

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lordpbrian@reddit

The 90s were such a wonderful time. We still had our innocence as users. We were all in the same boat, exploring every day.

And the world was still normal, in the sense that people weren’t plugged into the internet 24/7. You had to go out of your way to find a pc. So you’d do a little internet and then go back to the real world and continue about your life. I liked it better that way.

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mmoe54@reddit

I use this dialup simulator regularly, and it works android/iOS too! Remember to disconnect when your not on internet anymore. https://dialupmodemsound.com/

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NullPointerJunkie@reddit

I remember e-mail before e-mail spam existed. Firewalls didn't exist either. Using the Internet required knowledge of how to use a Unix terminal.

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rick420buzz@reddit

When search engines had names like 'Archie' and 'Veronica'.

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Entrepreneur-Minimum@reddit

yep, when gopher was more popular than the world wide web

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sarajevo81@reddit

Among USA students? Not worldwide, I assure you.

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DangKilla@reddit

I was blown away by Encyclopedias on CD. We paid $3000 in the 80s for a set of about 20 books

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Admirable-Fail1250@reddit

Not plugged in 24/7. I miss that.

I admit its a choice and I have control over it. I sometimes wish I didn't though.

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TheLastGenXer@reddit

i blame EVERYBODY getting online, so now its all scammers and companies trying to waste your time for ad rev

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dataslinger@reddit

Really? I agree with you about computing in the 90s, but to me, AI has rekindled that excitement and the heady sensation of limitless possibility. A central concept - that any individual or organization no longer has to have the skill or resources to write or have custom software written for them - is intoxicating to me. So many groups that couldn't afford good tooling will now have access to it. And the majority of organizations haven't woken up to that fact yet. It's still really, really early for that wave. So many previously disenfranchised imaginations about to be unleashed.

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Artistic_Ad7058@reddit

Completely meaningless that you are getting downvoted. If only people had some tolerance for variety of opinions.

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nanapancakethusiast@reddit

The reason we’re in a recession has rekindled your excitement for computing?

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dataslinger@reddit

Hard disagree. The reason we're in a recession is mismanagement of the economy and geopolitical bungling.

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dwkeith@reddit

Exactly, world affairs are worse but I haven’t had this much fun building toy projects since high school when I would stay up late building websites and browsing our local BBSes.

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Legitimate-Sun7909@reddit

I agree! I’m making something right now that would have taken approx 1000 years for me to make on my own. It is (I hope) genuinely useful for my colleagues and it’s been amazing to be actually able to make it. All I can think of is how exciting this allows new voices into the tech space. There are a ton of other things I don’t like ai for, but this sense of expansion is one of the positives

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sexistherapy@reddit

"I think if four companies hadn’t of monopolized it, that wonder and excitement would still be there. "

Something, something profiteering gluttons.

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electronaut_ritual@reddit

My father was a software engineer in the 1970s and I started my professional career 20 years later in the 1990s, and maybe it was just naiveté, but I really felt like I was contributing to something bigger than myself.

Software engineering was still nerdy, but it was also a bit rebellious, and I really believed access to information would have an equalizing affect on economic class.

I saw a big shift in the late 90s when more and more people started studying computer science because they saw it as a lucrative career, not something they felt passionate about.

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teknosophy_com@reddit

Join the good fight! I do in-home tech support for seniors. I remove any destructive software like Webroot, cancel any subscriptions like the 365 scandal, and help them get their passwords in order. It's a way to bring some goodness back into the industry and protect people from silicon valley.

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teknosophy_com@reddit

Yep, writing a book about it now. Things were optimistic until around 2012, when it became all about control. Last night I was at this house and they had 11 Alexa devices which are of course cloud-controlled. Couple that with the fact that nobody knows any password for anything, and doesn't realize they have multiple accounts for amazon and google. Mess. Only Mint can save us.

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nandobang@reddit

As a programmer and someone that grew around computers, I agree that it is not only nostalgia... Everything has changed. Computing (and even games) used to be this coolr, nerdy thing that people simply used, that's it. Nowadays everything has a political cause or agenda embedded, like browsers fighting to be your default one, claiming they're the The One(tm) that will not share your private data... Or, time and again, some random Researcher(tm) stating that "games cause brain damage"... Not to mention the GPU company that was raised by games, not producing GPU for gaming anymore. The other day I went to check some API reference and stumbled upon news of "age verification at OS level"...

Sigh, now everytime I look at the tech/computing scene there's a bunch of suits and ties looking only at profit, gone were the folks like the ones in the picture. Sorry for the rambling.

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anotherusername60@reddit

Sorry to disappoint you, this is what everybody remembers about his youth. Wonder and amazement tends to disappear with age and experience as experience and realism comes in. Back in the 90s there were veterans that were exactly as sentimental over their mainframe days in the 1970s as you are now.

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mr_greenmash@reddit

It's not just those 4 companies. It's the website builder apps too. Making everything look more similar and less personal.

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mechant_papa@reddit

I felt like a pioneer. I was a web developer, building internet applications. My grandfather had been a pioneer of radio in WW1. I felt I was walking in his footprints.

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Endawmyke@reddit

What’s the modern equivalent? Mesh networks?

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mechant_papa@reddit

Probably.

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Chocolate_Bourbon@reddit

There used to be a website that would randomly serve up a new website for you to check out. Almost always they were carefully crafted little pieces of the world.

The internet used to seem like the a new Star Trek like frontier of humanity meeting itself for the first time. Now it’s like an endless half constructed used car lot.

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No_Boysenberry4825@reddit

Stumbleupon perhaps. Had a nice community.

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petaz@reddit

this is how i discovered reddit in 2006 :)

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mechant_papa@reddit

Stumbleupon was awesom.

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Chocolate_Bourbon@reddit

I think that was one of them. There was another I don’t remember now that was really cute. Everything about it was gentle and pleasing to the eye. The internet was like a blossoming flower.

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WhyDoesOklahomaExist@reddit

The idea that I could load most if not all of the famous Louvre paintings from my apartment in the rural US just so amazing. People today have no concept of how cool that was.

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R-ten-K@reddit

There will be an entire younger generation writing nostalgically about this exact moment in computing 20 or 30 years from now, in much the same way you just did about the 90s.

Everything feels more exciting and fresh when you first contact it.

There is always plenty of cool/exciting stuff happening with technology , and likely always be.

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MC68328@reddit

Yup. To quote Ed Zitron, never forgive them for what they did to the computer.

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postmodest@reddit

The thing that gets me is that Andreesen went from that "we're going to change the world to empower everyone" mindset into a billionaire VC "the human race is animal trash and we need to press down harder with our boot" vampire.

The rest of us stayed mostly the same, but all the dotcom "Winners" have turned out to be the people trying to undo every social change they wrought with the exception of "instant global disinformation".

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Pogonia@reddit

One thing I've learned in my 30-year career as an entrepreneur and executive in tech companies is that the ones who "win" are usually, almost always, sociopaths. That's what it takes to "win" most of the time--you have to be pretty ruthless. Definitely not my cup of tea. I spun out to start my second business where I can be the kind of person I want to be even if it means not being "successful" by the measures of the VC world.

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MoxieMakeshift@reddit

My god I loved that browser, down to the animated N logo in the corner. The feeling of adventure in those days will never be matched, sadly

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PBRStreetgang1979@reddit

I distinctly recall the first time I saw the Netscape browser running. It made a distinct impression as I was working at an engineering University and the monochrome monitor on my desk was running Mosaic. So to see everything on the web suddenly rendered in full color was a Wizards of Oz moment.

Years later I crossed paths with Roberta Katz, former general counsel for Netscape. She had a litany of horror stories about all of the underhanded, dark, subversive things that Microsoft did to kill Netscape so that Microsoft Explorer wouldn't have to compete with them in the market (as presumably Microsoft knew it had an inferior product). it was really eye opening. As a life-long mac user I already despised Microsoft but that really clinched it.

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No_Boysenberry4825@reddit

What were some of the things Microsoft did?

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PBRStreetgang1979@reddit

It's been a lot of years so I don't remember all of the gory details. But some of it came up in the big antitrust case that the government brought against Microsoft. They were found guilty (in 2000) of violating antitrust laws by abusing monopoly power in the PC market, engaging in anticompetitive behavior to kill Netscape.

Essentially, they were bundling IE on Windows, which destroyed Netscape's revenue stream. They also put a lot of behind the scenes pressure on OEM hardware manufacturers (and also Intel) to only install IE and not Netscape and to stop supporting the latter. They cut deals with ISPs to enter into business agreements that prioritized IE and cut off Netscape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.

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sarajevo81@reddit

How dared they add features for free while NS added proprietary commercial server extensions instead!

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eldoggydogg@reddit

Remember when the default web background color changed to white from grey? That was a revelation.

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Agent_Greyy@reddit

What if Netscape still existed?

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sarajevo81@reddit

Firefox was ported from Netscape.

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trollofzog@reddit

Firefox is it’s spiritual successor

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alita-alita@reddit

Another victim of Microsofts monopoly

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sarajevo81@reddit

No, they were a victim of the idiotic "let's sell a web browser for $$" idea.

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arEKR@reddit

Haven't seen a b.u.m. equipment t shirt in decades. Miss these days...

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Andy-Martin@reddit

That was the first thing that really stuck out to me as well. Really takes me back to simpler times.

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darkwater427@reddit

Is that... Jamie Zawinski?

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Grobbelboy@reddit

Man, it’s always so great and nostalgic to go back to a time when capitalism hadn’t yet caught up and got its claws in some exciting, major technological development

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lordfarshave@reddit

What a bunch of nerds! Dweebs, the whole lot of them!

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jaxupaxu@reddit

God I miss those days. Everything was so much simpler. People were better. There wasnt any of this stupid political division. People could at least talk to each other and disagree like real people.

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marx2k@reddit

Looks like every BBS meetup I've ever been to

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artificerone@reddit

Magnificent browser

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Silo-Joe@reddit

Would be cool if that stone Netscape logo were animated with a motor to pulse in and out.

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Distinct-Question-16@reddit

yeah they could make a throbber of it

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Pogonia@reddit

Those were weird times. How anyone thought a browser software company would become big and powerful baffled me then and well, I wasn't wrong. So many bad ideas with huge money poured behind it. Similar to today's AI rush but not quite the same--back then it was money thrown at companies with no real chance of ever being profitable whereas today most of the big players in AI already have billions to blow.

It didn't take long for Netscape to get so bad and bloated all of my IT friends and I referred to it as Nutscrape.

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R-ten-K@reddit

FWIW, Netscape was fundamentally more of a web server/backend company than a browser company. The browser was largely meant to be a free client used to access the services and infrastructure provided by the server side of the business, and that server ecosystem definitely was not free.

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Pogonia@reddit

True. But again, there were a ton of great options besides them, many of which *were* free. I was running NCSA's HTTPd server software by early 1994, for example. By the following year you had Microsoft IIS bundled for free with NT Server and Apache as a free option too...so they were targeting a market that had lots of free options and they didn't offer a compelling reason to pay them the big bucks.

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trollofzog@reddit

It was better than Internet Exploiter… until v4 anyway.

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Pogonia@reddit

True, our favorite term for that steaming heap was Internet Exploder.

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nolij420@reddit

I was wondering how far down in the comments I'd have to go for a Nutscrape reference 😆

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GATORinaZ28@reddit

"Nutscrape" lol I've never heard that one and love it

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Akp1072@reddit

Give me the privacy of a cubicle back!

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lordpbrian@reddit

The worst shift in the history of corporate America was the cubicle to the pen. It makes me despise work.

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Fit_Cut_4238@reddit

Netscape, sun and silicon graphics had it locked down.

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AppendixN@reddit

I remember how Netscape seemed like the good guys, freeing web users from the tyranny of Microsoft. Who knew Marc Andreessen would turn out to be such a massive reactionary right-wing gobshite

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R-ten-K@reddit

Unfortunately, that 90s dotcom scene was choke full of libertarian antisocial creepzoids.

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AppendixN@reddit

Yeah, they really ruined the ideals that the Silicon Valley hippies imagined for computing back in the '70s.

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Neither-Box8081@reddit

The browser wars!!! What a time to be alive. If it wasn't for Netscape we probably wouldnt have Mozilla

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Porchmuse@reddit

Buddy of mine used to work there around that time. One of the first people I knew who had a remote job.

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punkwalrus@reddit

I used to work for the company that bought them out. Spoke with some of their sysadmins and developers for a while, and the end was chaos: bloat, perks (clothing choice, dogs at your desk, insurance packages) vanishing overnight, but the one story that sticks with me was some high-power 90s yuppie exect who took over some of their technical operations. Came into work in slacks, suspenders, tie, and $200 Arrow dress shirts. Spoke buzzword bingo.

In one meeting, he cursed a product release because this "QA Department" was "down on the product." He didn't want developers who constantly complained about the product. Dude. That's your QA department. That's their JOB to find bugs and report them. He canned the team as "not team players." This was right before the who Netscape 7.x fiasco.

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Porchmuse@reddit

Sounds about right. My friend got to work out of his house on the East coast with practically no oversight and made a ton of money.

A lot of LAN parties and beer drinking was done at his place during that time.

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punkwalrus@reddit

IIRC, and my memory may not be the best, they had 22 buildings on their campus and it was hemorrhaging money at the end.

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2D15@reddit

My dad worked for them remotely but still got to go on their retreats. He has some crazy stories. Apparently their CEO “fought” a lion on stage at one of them.

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Rey_Mezcalero@reddit

Netscape…had the best browser…and then they heavily overladen it so that a large number of people could no longer just browse due to the overhead.

Too many features people don’t want and things that worked well like browsing and ah I forgot what it was called now, but a popular way to share data with others (not Napster) and they broke the functionality.

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BakedCoinMaker@reddit

🤙🏼

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juancn@reddit

The most expensive software rewrite ever. It cost them their lead and we all had to suffer IE for ages.

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Poppod@reddit

It was MS as dictator which killed NS.

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stq66@reddit

They had a tombstone at their entrance?

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ggoptimus@reddit

Are they all super rich now?

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ksuwildkat@reddit

I paid money for Netscape Navigator

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Twin_Flyer@reddit

I made a personal website using Netscape Navigator in 2001!!!! Was great in its day! Amazingly it still works lol

http://radiocontrolhobbies.freeservers.com/mravt.htm

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ultimatebob@reddit

I always liked that fountain, I used to drive past it on the way to work!

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hotbowlofsoup@reddit

Does it still exist?

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trollofzog@reddit

Yes https://usarundbrief.com/34/images/fountain.jpg

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ultimatebob@reddit

It was still there when I left in late 98. Not sure when they removed it.

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NoBeautiful1699@reddit

Oh dang i go by that building a lot. I think symantec used to be next doors too

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lordpbrian@reddit

At one point AOL was in the same building

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trollofzog@reddit

Because AOL bought Netscape company.

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sarajevo81@reddit

How nice of them! It's not like they sold Mosaic MIT code as their browser... like for $$, or anything.

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PatrioticPariah@reddit

Dude in pic 4, looks like he might have enjoyed Johnny Pneumonic.

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JayS87@reddit

Netscape 4.7 teached me HTML4

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GC_and_Tech@reddit

In my opinion the 90s was the golden era of computing! The field was fresh, exciting and full of innovation! People who were also into computers as users needed to know how to use a computer and had to research how to do stuff, go to the local PC shop to ask for advice, build their own homebrew software to do that one specific thing they wanted etc. etc., they did not just got a device to browse facebook and rot away in front of a monitor!

Even computer magazines/Journalism were exciting at the time! I couldn't wait every month to get my hands on PC Pro and PC World among others...

Anyway, there is some excitement today but in fields like AI and Quantum Computing, but it does not feel the same.

For the old boys and for the younger people who want to feel the 90s nostalgia of the golden era of computing go and watch "Halt and Catch Fire" if you have not already seen it!

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dmpk2k@reddit

There's always the hobbyist FPGA world. Went into it recently, and it feels like the 90s.

Order a ULX3S and disappear down the yosys rabbit hole...

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publicschoolfool@reddit

Gilfoyle in picture 4!

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rekoil@reddit

That's Jamie Zawinski, who had a great story about trying to get camo netting installed around his cube (it's somewhere in his blog but I'm not finding it). He owns the DNA Lounge in SoMA now.

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DrNick42@reddit

Those photos couldn’t look any more 1990’s if they tried

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Dadbode1981@reddit

I totally forgot about BUM equipment haha wow

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aakaase@reddit

Never even understood what that meant

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YandersonSilva@reddit

It doesn't mean anything lol

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Work-Safe-Reddit4450@reddit

FUBU

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Dadbode1981@reddit

Omg lol

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YandersonSilva@reddit

I remember those bum shirts! That brand was EVERYWHERE in the 90s.

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grondfoehammer@reddit

Which one is Conehead?

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robreeeezy@reddit

Slide 4. On the right sitting down in a checkered button up.

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MrErnestPWorrell@reddit

I can smell that last picture

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Different-Audience34@reddit

The company Microsoft killed.

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Tall-Introduction414@reddit

Jamie Zawinski (jwz) is still way cool.

Marc Andreessen turned into a disgusting evil Trumpian enormous douche.

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strider_sifurowuh@reddit

unfortunately I think the dollar signs that clouded their entire worldview over AI and cryptocurrency combined with the holier-than-thou attitude Andreeessen and some others have cultivated over time resulted in them bring broken by the growing public distrust of AI and Crypto.

They saw a cash cow and had it in their mind that the stupid masses just couldn't understand the brilliance that they were bringing out and so they've become reactionary lunatics.

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AllReflection@reddit

Came to say this about Andreessen

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eldoggydogg@reddit

Me too. Fuck that loser.

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phdibart@reddit

Oh no, someone disagrees with me! I must resort to character attacks!

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flatfisher@reddit

Speaking of jwz let's not forget this regarding Netscape https://www.jwz.org/doc/censorzilla.html

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Tall-Introduction414@reddit

Ngl. This looks like some of my personal projects. Comment swears out the wazoo.

And people say comments are useless. Pshaw.

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whatyoucallmetoday@reddit

No software is complete until it can send email.

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bwann@reddit

jwz looks way different now with a short haircut

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gotkube@reddit

I installed a Netscape skin on Firefox recently and the vibe hits pretty nice.

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sleipnirreddit@reddit

I might have taken that picture of the front fountain/logo. Marc asked me to take one like that the day AOL bought them.

He was still an Asperger’s poster boy, but less of a complete douchebag back then.

“Hell, boy, I was there!”

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mrcrude@reddit

The last photo seems to be at the Exploratorium.

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the_sysop@reddit

If you like that you're the going to love this.

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lordpbrian@reddit

Oh wowww dude. Thank you!

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jgnp@reddit

Is that the tactile dome at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in the last image?

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Cognonymous@reddit

What is going on with the ceiling in pic 3? Is it supposed to look like that or were they under construction?

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cmatons@reddit

No diversity... That's why they fail!

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lordpbrian@reddit

So you’re saying we should judge people based on the color of their skin…

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cmatons@reddit

I’m not saying that (nor do I think it), but there’s a group of people who want to force all of us to believe that diversity is more important than competence… On the other hand, I also feel that some people (and I’m not referring to you) don’t grasp the irony…

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ScalarWeapon@reddit

but there’s a group of people who want to force all of us to believe that diversity is more important than competence

not sure where you are getting that. unless your stance is that only white people are competent. surely that's not what you mean.

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noob-combo@reddit

Nice, BUM equipment spotted.

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Pierlas@reddit

Did anyone spot Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman) from The Fifth Element?

Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg

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ifeelsopretty@reddit

I went to high school with the guy on the right in the first picture. He went on to be one of the first employees at Netscape, and I… did not.

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That-Surprise@reddit

These IKEA futons velcro together

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MasqueradeOfSilence@reddit

This looks like nerd paradise, wish I could step back in time

Love the fountain as well.

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Beginning_Register99@reddit

I remember those days. I used a Netscape version. for OS/2 as I worked for IBM at the time and was a bis advocate for OS/2 WARP. The internet was such a mostly happy place back then. Sigh

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buffering@reddit

Related: The old Mosaic Communications/Netscape website (http://mcom.com) rendered with the original Tim Berners-Lee WWW browser on a NeXT Cube.

https://imgur.com/a/B0Z8Rkl

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