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If you look in the right corners, the internet dream of the 1990s is still alive.

More than 17 million Americans regularly use MapQuest, one of the first digital mapping sites to be taken over by Google and Apple long ago, according to data from research firm Comscore. Go.com, the dot-com-era internet portal, shut down 20 years ago, but its ghost lives on in “Go.” part of web addresses Some Disney sites.

Ask Jeeves, a web search engine that started before Google, still has fans and people typing “Ask Jeeves a question” into their Google searches.

Maybe you’re mocking AOL, but it’s still the 50th most popular website in the US, according to figures from SimilarWeb. Second Life, the virtual world of the early 2000s, never disappeared and is now have a second life as a proto-metaverse brand.

Some stars who were once online have been around for much longer than we might have hoped, suggesting that it is possible to build an online life long after stardom has ceased to exist.

“These are almost brand names for cockroaches,” said Ben Schott, author of the Bloomberg Opinion brand and ad. “They’re small enough and too tough to be killed.”

A comparison with rush errors, appear be a compliment. But there is something heartwarming about the pioneers who shaped the early internet, lost their composure and dominance, and eventually carved out a niche. They will never be as popular or powerful as a generation ago, but moldy internet brands may still have a fruitful purpose.

These brands have survived through a combination of inertia, nostalgia, the fact that they’re making a product that people love, the ability to make digital money, and the quirks of the rickety internet. If today’s internet powers like Facebook and Pinterest also lose their relevance, they could persist for decades.

System1, which owns MapQuest and HowStuffWorks among other websites, has a strategy of attracting people to its digital property collection, converting them into loyal users, and monetizing their clicks or other sales, through ad servings or other techniques. It’s not far from the web strategy of the early 2000s to turn “eyeballs” into revenue.

Michael Blend, CEO and co-founder of System1 said that his company spends money on internet ads to attract people to MapQuest, while also developing mapping functions. A feature added since System1 Acquired MapQuest from Verizon In 2019 it allows delivery couriers to chart long routes with many stops.

Blend said that Generation X nostalgia or online marketing might entice people to try MapQuest once or twice, but the company wanted to make the site useful enough to keep coming back regularly, Blend said. He also said that more than half of the people who use MapQuest are too young to have known about it in its heyday.

Blend is proud that MapQuest has stayed as long as it is. “There are so many internet brands that come and go and you never hear from them again,” he said.

I don’t have a great explanation for the flexibility of some of the 1990s internet features. Despite being the owner of the internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp, people are searching for Ask Jeeves. He gave up the English butler name in 2005 and Stop trying to compete with Google search more than ten years ago. The website, now called Ask.com, is mostly a compilation of entertainment and celebrity news.

A spokesperson for Disney, which owns the Go.com internet portal, did not provide a solid explanation as to why some of the company’s websites still have Go’s fingerprints. (Onion years ago He mocked Disney for this.) In general, today’s websites are often built on remnants of the old internet, such as a modern mansion built on the foundation of a 19th-century house.

Schott mentioned something I couldn’t get out of my mind. He said that when a once-loved restaurant chain or industrial factory closes, the typical reaction of the public is sadness for people’s loss. But when internet properties like Yahoo and Myspace collapse or die, it’s often dismissed as a joke, Schott said.

“When tech companies fail, there’s a weird schadenfreude that I don’t think happens to other industries,” he said. “I’m not sure what this is about.”

Maybe this is starting to change. When Microsoft retired the 27-year-old Internet Explorer web browser this month, nostalgia spilled out. As the Internet ages – and those of us who remember its early years too – we may feel more stirrings of emotion for what happened before.

Before you go …

• China’s eyes are on its citizens: A investigation He found from The New York Times that the surveillance by Chinese officials was more extensive than previously understood. Police want facial recognition cameras where people eat and shop, and even in private areas like residences and hotels. Authorities are purchasing equipment to create large-scale iris scans and DNA databases. The goal, my colleagues report, is “to maximize what the state can learn about a person’s identity, activities, and social affiliations, which can ultimately help the government maintain its authoritarian rule.”

  Watch the review video here.

• Complaints about a bait and switch: small business owners to say He said Google had linked them to the company’s free customized email and other workplace software, and is now demanding payment in a process they found clumsy. “It seemed unnecessarily trivial to me,” one business owner told my colleague Nico Grant.

• Other auto companies have Tesla envy: Established automakers like Ford wants to sell more of its cars directly to buyers online, as Tesla did. One problem: Paul Stenquist writes for The Times, laws in many states require cars to be sold through dealerships.

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