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One of the biggest technology stories of 1998 was the huge antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. It's monopoly week The edge, so I wrote a little about the place of this lawsuit in the legal landscape of the 90s. I also reviewed Antitrust, the 2001 thriller about a fictional Microsoft that kills software developers to steal their code.
But today's big news is about another extremely important and potentially monopolistic technology company: Google, which was created on September 4, 1998. To celebrate, you can check out some "stickers" from one of the early versions of Google. Or you can read for news on celebrity chat rooms, email and a North Korean satellite.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched the Google search engine (originally called "BackRub") at Stanford in 1996. And their company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, which makes it 20 years this week. We have established a chronology of the impressive and tumultuous life of Google.
But in the beginning, society did not attract much attention. After all, it was one of many search engines and web portals. (Google week launched, PC Magazine has published a cover on the "hottest portals" of the Internet, ranging from Infoseek to AOL.com – but not from Google. Stanford Daily It was not until January 1999 to cover the company that Brin and Page had proclaimed "Stanford's next big Internet start-up". A few months later, people praised Google's "remarkably smart" results. but forgotten. RIP, AltaVista.
Although it may be hard to imagine now, there was a time when we wanted celebrities to talk more on the Internet. Web portals have recognized this desire, until Independent claimed on September 7, 1998, "It seems like you can not connect these days without falling on a celebrity in a chat room."
If you can go beyond George Michael's jokes in the beginning, you'll find an overview of the best "celebweb" deals. the PC Magazine The story above says that no other portal carries as many celebrities as AOL, but that Independent in favor of MSN UK, whose events included a live chat session around the launch of The X-Files' first film in 1998.
Someone seems to have archived the X Files the discussion session logs, which include Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny and Chris Carter with MSN users. Fans are asking a lot of good questions – but some of them are clearly only delivering Mulder and Scully really difficult.
This week also reminded people of how horrible the Internet can be. On September 3, news agencies denounced an online raid on a child pornography network called "Wonderland Club", with more than 100 arrests in a dozen countries. The massive bust, called Operation Cathedral, took two years to coordinate. The police finally seized more than 750,000 photos of more than 1,200 children. Several suspects were later convicted, although in the UK they received sentences short enough for critics to call them "joke".
The operation was unprecedented in its size, but these busts quickly became an inescapable element of law enforcement. Two years after the original arrests, a long list Newsweek An article traced the way computers and the Internet facilitated the distribution of child pornography.
Meanwhile, tensions over North Korea were strong, as the world wondered if the country had launched its first satellite in space. On August 31, North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile on Japan for unknown reasons. Officials speculated that the move was a threat or firepower demonstration. A few days later, North Korea's national news agency said the missile was actually a rocket carrying a satellite launched to promote "scientific research for the peaceful use of space" and to broadcast anthems. patriotic.
A US official initially said the launch was "possible". But after another week, the State Department announced that it thought the attempt had failed and that North Korea had taken 14 years to put into orbit.
Silicon Valley, however, was involved in a a lot more perverse conflict: an angry discussion forum scandal. Microsoft was compiling evidence to defend itself against antitrust claims, and it wanted to prove that its competitor Netscape had crashed instead of being crushed by Microsoft. To do this, he issued subpoenas for two internal Netscape forums called "Bad Attitude" and "Really Bad Attitude".
Both were dedicated to evacuating internal complaints, but "Really Bad Attitude" was reserved for the most vituperative "flame mail" – "you could be on RBA only if you first flamed so hard that the bile was coming out. of your orbits ". The content of the messages was eventually published, but although some have made Netscape look bad – calling the company "faceless society" and its new employees "faint-hearted late" – Microsoft has always lost its case.
September 7th The New York Times drew a greater trend from this subpoena, writing about technology companies that "allow, or even encourage, employees to vent frustrations, passions, hopes and suggestions" in bulletin boards. These internal communications are still common. But as Silicon Valley has become more openly political, it has caused considerable embarrassment and fueled legal complaints, including a protracted struggle for diversity at Google. So, let's savor the moment when a flamboyant villain just said that your company's product was "faster than a legless dog." If the dog is at the waist in molasses. And dead."
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