Contact Yahoo (1998) | Hacker News Reader

Contact Yahoo (1998)

docs.yahoo.com

79 pointsaroman36 comments

The quality of the image notwithstanding (and there were good reasons for that with the bandwidth of the time), this page looks remarkably good, and holds up far better than sites half its age. Just goes to show yet again that with design less really is more.

That is a really clean and clear page to me. There is only relevant information with a small amount of irritation on it. And it works for mobile too! :)

Nice! Look also at the "web launch" order form: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/orderform.html

Amazing, it's great how something so new (online advertising on a search engine) can be already so old. I mean, looks like you had to mail that thing with a $1000 check.

Crazy!

I'm pretty impressed that the links on the top bar still take you (via redirects, sure) to relevant places.

I love the redirect sequence on the "Cool" button:

    $ curl -I -L http://www.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Cool_Links/ | grep Location

    Location: http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/cool_links/
    Location: http://dir.yahoo.com/entertainment/cool_links/
    Location: http://picks.yahoo.com/
    Location: http://buzz.yahoo.com/
    Location: http://www.yahoo.com

A shame it doesn't end in https redirection.

I'm impressed they used tableless HTML!

Took me a while to notice that this wasn't on archive.org. Are these still up as an oversight? If so, that's pretty impressive that their server infrastructure hasn't changed radically in so many years.

This page as well:

http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/info/faq.html

"What does Yahoo! stand for? [..] Yahoo! is an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle."

I remember actually calling Yahoo about something (I think web hosting?) I remember I thought that was a huge problem with Google (and still do) that there is no way to call them.

The maps link around "3400 Central Expressway" is broken. BETTER REPORT IT.

Interesting! by 2003, Yahoo had acquired 22 companies: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/info/faq.html

Even in 1998, you couldn't contact their postmaster.

Old news: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/releaseindex.html

Why exactly are these reminiscent pieces other than verifying that the past really existed getting upvotes lately?

Probably because it's interesting? I never saw the web in its infancy like this. I've spent hours browsing archive.org before to see what the early days of the internet was like back then.

Wow, that comment made me feel old.

As someone who first got on the internet in 1995 at the age of 17, I know that feel.

Note the Yahoo logo image map. :)

Yeah, I thought the image map was hilarious.

The second link in the menu, "Cool" goes through at least 4 redirects before winding up back on the www.yahoo.com home page :)

I'm so glad the days of image maps are gone!

me neither - I used lynx ;)

How often do you see any web startup these days post a phone number, let alone a physical address?

if you're afraid of associating your contact data with your startup you're either running an illegal site or you're ashamed of your own idea.

Or you provide support some other way than by phone. Plenty of consumer startups large and small don't have an easily reachable phone number on their sites.

I am not posting my contact data on a website of mine because I do not want my real life social circle to know about one of my online circles. it is a simple matter of privacy. your comment is a strawmen or how you call that. there are many more possible reasonings than your two.

I prefer this trip down memory lane:

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/25/yahoos-404-at-giants-stadiu...

http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2010/02/404-firetruck.jp...

sorry, i couldn't resist

Note: Office Hours (8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST)

Office closed probably from 12:00 p.m - 12:30 p.m for lunch break :P

needs body style { background: #ccc }

As far as I remember, it was a feature, not a bug (at least I remember reading something like that back then... can’t find any referenes right now): the idea was, Yahoo worked well with any light background colour.

Don't you mean body bgcolor=silver?

I'll be impressed when they post some phone numbers.

To be fair, they do post quite a lot of phone numbers, I don't know where they dug that page from:

http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/company-address.aspx

Yahoo! Inc. 701 First Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94089 Tel: (408) 349-3300 Fax: (408) 349-3301

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