Time flies

To remind you of how fast the Internet and tech businesscycle moves here are the first time appearances of a few notable companies and technologies on usenet :

May 1981 First mention of Microsoft
Jun 1981 First mention of Microsoft MS-DOS
Dec 1982 Announcement of first cell phone deployment in Chicago
Feb 1983 First mention of a Fax machine
Nov 1983 First mention of Microsoft Windows
Mar 1988 First mention of the term 'search engine'
Sep 1989 First mention of AOL
Aug 1991 Tim Berners-Lee's announcement of the World Wide Web project
Oct 1991 Linus Torvalds' Linux announcement
Apr 1994 Instance of first commercial mass spamming
FOct 1994 Marc Andreessen's Netscape announcement
Dec 1995 Announcement of AltaVista launch
Mar 1998 First mention of Google


6 years ago nobody had ever heard heard of Google. 13 years ago Microsoft was in the realm of the obscure, now they claim world domination. How's that for an ever faster pace in the business cycle !!!