Browsers, IM clients, P2P, and e-commerce pioneers—what they built, and why they ended.

• AOL Instant Messenger

  Pre-dated texting, couldn't outlast smartphones

  1997–2017 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Jet (retail)

  Walmart's $3.3B Amazon killer, shut down 4 years later

  2015–2020 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Napster (original)

  Made MP3 sharing mainstream, killed by lawsuits

  1999–2001 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Netscape

  Netscape lost the browser war but its code became the internet you use today

  1994–2008 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Orkut

  Google’s early social network that ruled Brazil and India before shutting down in 2014.

  2004–2014 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Pets.com

  An online pet supply store that raised over $300 million, ran a Super Bowl ad featuring a sock puppet, and shut down just 268 days after go…

  1998–2000 🏷️ Software & Internet

• Yahoo! Messenger

  A free chat program from the late 1990s that let you see who was online, send messages, and shake someone's computer screen with the push o…

  1998–2018 🏷️ Software & Internet