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Comment by semiquaver | Hacker News Reader

Berkshire Hathaway has my favorite website (or, WEB page, as they style it) of any big company: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

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  <meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18828">

*Jurassic Park taking off glasses.gif*

I mean, what did you expect?

    Copyright © 1978-2025 Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

did Warren Buffet code this himself?

Yes, he used punch cards and a System 360.

Incredibly clear and direct. Amazing to see a big company like that keeping it so old school. Thanks for pointing it out!

And it looks the same with and without Javascript enabled. Unlike 99% of all web sites which are anything from shite through to blank pages without JS.

I half expected to see an "under construction" gif and a "powered by GeoCities" tag at the bottom

It's definitely missing a website hits counter.

I want the blinking fuchsia marque in H1 italic Comic Sans on a yellow starry night animated GIF background.

with embedded MIDI sound effects and looping background music

Click next for the next site in our webring!

geocities and netcom personal pages.

Sign my guestbook!

Made with Notepad, best viewed with Netscape, and W3C HTML 3 valid.

Why?

This doesn’t give the vibes of an amateur personal site - it’s a timeless business site.

Not sure I agree with "timeless." This site is like opening a time capsule.

Timeless functionality - definitely not design! :]

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

This brings back some (unpleasant) memories.

But otherwise I admire the minimalism.

99/100 Lighthouse performance score.

Good reminder that every web page starts off fast by default and is only made slow by designers and frameworks.

Correction designers and frameworks don’t build websites the engineers do

My first visit to the Berkshire Hathaway website a few years ago literally changed my life. I was immediately attracted. I went to search Buffett and went down the rabbit hole of shareholder meetings clips and value investing and index investing. I am so much richer mentally and financially now thanks to the random visit to this website.

My god, static text with no graphics!? In 2026!?

They have a long tradition of keeping it simple going back long before the web. The annual reports had no pictures or puffery unlike most companies, though much better writing.

Except geicoimg.gif, lol

I almost want to let Warren know he could have an entire extra egg McMuffin per year if he switches to SVG rendering of the Geico logo on the site.

8.3 naming scheme too

"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response."

I wonder how much Geico payed for that add placement…

They own GEICO...

Oh; well that’s embarrassing haha

Nah, you can bet there's a tax break in there somewhere

he owns geico

here's another good one: https://terraformindustries.com/

it's certainly fast!!

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