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"Garrett\u00A0Heath\u00A0is a technology storyteller with\u00A0Rackspace.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIn the midst of incremental technology changes, we can lose sight of how far we\u2019ve come. Personal trainers understand this phenomenon, which is why they ask people to take photos throughout their journey to better health. It is hard to tell the progress from day-to-day, but a quick look at images a month or more apart can reveal big changes.\r\nThe look and feel of the Web has undergone an extraordinary transformation. It went from being a tangled Web of neon links, HTML tables and indexed themes to a sophisticated set of properties, powered by the latest in content trends and technologies.\r\nWhile working on a guide to enterprise content solutions, I was struck by how far we\u2019ve come from coding website content via HTML to having options that handle much of the heavy lifting for us. Travel through time as you look at snapshots from the Wayback Machine of well-known brands throughout the years.\r\nAOL\r\nIf you came of age along with the internet in the mid-90s, the crackling modem line and \u201CYou've got mail\u201D sounds will instantly trigger memories. As one of the first ISPs that gave an internet connection and email to the masses, AOL reinvented itself as a media company with the advent of DSL and cable modems.\u00A0\r\n1996: The site offered several stories in addition to peddling its\u00A0services.\r\n\r\n2002: As people began abandoning AOL as their ISP, there was still a need for all of those email addresses that ended in @aol.com, not to mention having the ability to check in on all your friends\u2014or leave snarky away messages\u2014via AOL Instant Messenger.\r\n\r\n2005: By this time AOL made the jump to becoming more of a content portal as its ISP business began to shrink. Check out that classic table view for its AOL Directory.\r\n\r\n2014: AOL dropped all reference to the ISP business and gave only a casual nod to its\u00A0email service. While there is no reference to the AOL Instant Messenger on the webpage, users can still visit AIM\u2019s website and log in for nostalgia\u2019s sake.\u00A0\r\n\r\n\r\nYahoo\r\nLong before Google was a verb, we would search the Web on Yahoo. While it seemed to always be on the top of the pile of early search engines (Alta Vista, Lycos and Dogpile), it gradually lost market share to Google.\r\nOver time, the site became more of a media hub but it still features search as central to its business.\r\n1996: Believe it or not, back in the day you had to actually \u201Csubmit\u201D your site to search engines. The baby icon for new links is as indelible to the early Web as the \u201Cunder construction\u201D GIF.\r\n\r\n2002: In addition to being one of the first places to offer email for free, Yahoo also became a go-to place to play online card games and fantasy sports. But even in 2002, websites were still organized by subject on Yahoo.\r\n\r\n2006: Yahoo modernizes the look and feel, but still crammed plenty of links down the Web visitor\u2019s throat. The news was presented with titles only, rather than descriptions or teasers for the story.\r\n\r\n2014: Today, Yahoo has an emphasis on content, although rather than focusing on news it\u00A0tends to look at lighthearted stories. Search is still prominent at the top, but seems to take a backseat to everything else going on the page.\r\n\r\n\r\nESPN\r\nOne of the pioneers in cable television, ESPN has also made substantial changes on its online property. In addition to providing highlights and recaps, ESPN also\u00A0offers\u00A0Insider, a paid content section of its\u00A0website. The company was also one of the first to realize the value of letting sites like Grantland and FiveThirtyEight live outside the umbrella of the corporate site.\r\n1999: Early on, ESPN realized that people enjoy more than just a list of headlines. It\u00A0provided a description of\u00A0the\u00A0top story so users could get more information before clicking the link.\r\n\r\n2002:\u00A0The company changed the masthead from ESPN.com to just ESPN, while getting a little more modern logo. The previously harsh black/yellow sidebar was swapped out with a more easy-on-the-eyes grey sidebar.\u00A0\r\n\r\n2006: The site made the leap to the more modern design, moving the sports from a sidebar to a breadcrumb trail at the top. However, the header was still massive and there was plenty of advertisements above the fold.\r\n\r\n2014: The size of the logo was substantially reduced and mousing over the list of sports in the black bar will expand a box with current stories for that sport. The lead story is not a \u201Cstory\u201D at all\u2014it\u2019s a link to view live programming on its\u00A0WatchESPN app.\r\n\r\nHow far the Web has come! Could you imagine if today, we'd be &amp;quot;Yahooing&amp;quot; things instead of &amp;quot;Googling&amp;quot;?\u00A0A quick look back through the years makes us appreciate the modern Web so much more.\r\nCheck out\u00A0the full guide to enterprise content solutions to see how technology can overhaul content chaos.\r\nRead next: What the Internet looked like before Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/07/15/website-ages-tracking-aol-yahoo-espn-across-time/>