15 Websites That Changed the World

nuke-alwin writes "To mark the web's 15th anniversary, The Guardian is reporting on 15 websites that changed the world. Everything from commercial sites like eBay and Amazon to social collaboratives like Wikipedia and Slashdot made the list." From the article's comments on Blogger: "Content was once made by companies for passive consumption by people. After Blogger, people were the content. They wrote about and read about their friends, their opinions, their cats. (There was a lot about cats in the early blogs.) None had a huge audience but collectively they were massive. Now you see TV networks saying: 'We've gotta get on the web because that's where the audience is,' says Williams."

Comments

Re:one man's summary

[gomoX]

Google's impact on the world's dynamics are only comparable to, I don't know, relativity? People keep saying "ooo there's so much information on the intarweb, it's so much better than Encarta 97!". The Internet was nothing before Google. A part of the information was there, but it was useless. Remember "bookmarks"? Well, those were actually useful. You had to create your own personal index of the small portion of the Internet you happened to bump into while surfing.

Today Google will find the information you want in seconds. *Everything* is out there. Every guy and his cat has a website where he can post whatever he wants. The explosion of the Internet was only made possible by Google.

Altavista could barely get 3 results when searching for "altavista". It *sucked*. If you honestly think that nothing has changed since Altavista, then I take it you didn't use Altavista much.