The internet in 1994
The banner ad AT&T ran on HotWired in October is generally counted as the first, and it reportedly drew a click-through rate of around 44 per cent — a number that has never been approached since and that says more about novelty than about advertising. Yahoo began as a hand-maintained list of links, which was a workable way to index a web of a few thousand sites and became impossible within three years. Netscape was founded by people who had built Mosaic and wanted to do it commercially.
The numbers
- Websites
- 2,738 hostnames responding to HTTP
- Typical connection
- 14.4 kbps — A 14.4 kbps modem. 28.8 arrived at the end of the year and cost a fortune.
- A gigabyte of storage cost
- $1,500, in 1994 dollars
How long things took to download
| What | At 14.4 kbps |
|---|---|
| A 3 MB song | 28 minutes |
| A 5 MB photo | 47 minutes |
| A 700 MB CD image | 4.6 days |
| A 4 GB film | 27 days |
| A 50 GB game | 337 days |
What arrived in 1994
- Yahoo, as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web"
- Netscape, founded in April
- The first banner advertisement, on HotWired in October
The thing people misremember
The web was not organised by search in 1994. It was organised by directories — hand-curated lists of links — and by people emailing each other URLs. Search that worked did not arrive for years.
Against the years around it
| Year | Hostnames | Typical speed | $/GB of storage | A 4 GB film took |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | 130 | 14.4 kbps | $4,000 | 27 days |
| 1994 | 2,738 | 14.4 kbps | $1,500 | 27 days |
| 1995 | 23,500 | 28.8 kbps | $900 | 13 days |
Between 1994 and 2020 the typical connection went from 14.4 kbps to 100 Mbps, a factor of 6,944, and a gigabyte of storage fell from $1,500 to $0.020 — a factor of 75,000. The 4 GB film that took 27 days takes 6 minutes.
Common questions
- What was the internet like in 1994?
- The first banner ad appears, and its click-through rate is 44 per cent. A typical home connection was 14.4 kbps, there were about 2,738 hostnames responding on the web, and a gigabyte of storage cost $1,500.
- How long did it take to download a film in 1994?
- A 4 GB film at 14.4 kbps would have taken about 27 days, assuming the connection held its rated speed the whole way, which it would not have.
- How many websites were there in 1994?
- About 2,738 hostnames responded to HTTP. That counts hostnames rather than distinct sites, which is why the figure occasionally falls between years without the web shrinking.
- What do people get wrong about 1994?
- The web was not organised by search in 1994. It was organised by directories — hand-curated lists of links — and by people emailing each other URLs. Search that worked did not arrive for years.
Related pages
- The internet in 1993 Mosaic puts pictures on the same page as text, and the web stops being a document store.
- The internet in 1995 Amazon, eBay and JavaScript all arrive in the same year.
- Every year side by side Speed, storage cost and site count in one table
- Convert data units Bits, bytes, and why a megabit is not a megabyte
Sources
- Web Server Survey — Netcraft
- ICT Facts and Figures / World Telecommunication Indicators — International Telecommunication Union
- Historical cost of computer memory and storage — Compiled from contemporaneous retail advertising and manufacturer price lists