Internet History Podcast

Finally! A detailed history of the development of the iPhone inside Apple. But not only that, an extensive history of all the technologies that came together to make the iPhone possible. Lithium ion battery technology, touchscreen technology, Gorilla Glass, GPS, digital photography, maps… everything. The author, Brian Merchant, was kind enough to send an advanced copy and, as you’ll hear when I talk to him, I couldn’t have been more excited to read! This is the book I’ve been waiting for for about ten years.Buy your own copy here!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A lot of people give credit to Justin Hall for being, if not the first, then spiritually, at least, the “first” blogger. Since early 1994, first as Justin’s Homepage and at various points, as Justin’s Links from the Underground and Links.net, Justin Hall has been writing online and sharing online—especially, sharing himself online—longer than almost anyone else on the planet. Hear his story today, and watch his documentary at: http://overshare.links.net/  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For several months now, I've been complaining on Twitter and a bunch of other places that, for as ubiquitous as Netflix streaming has become—I think it's one of the most important technology products of the last decade at least— there's actually been comparatively little journalism or scholarship about how the product came about. That's why I was delighted to get acquainted with Neil Hunt, who is the Chief Product Officer at Netflix. Since he's been at Netflix since 1999, not only is he the perfect person to tell us how Netflix streaming came about (the technical hurdles, the strategic decisions, etc.) but he can also give us the whole history of Netflix, from basically the very beginning. Link to transcript.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andy Rachleff was a co-founder of Benchmark, one of the most respected venture capital firms to this very day, and one of the biggest venture players during the dotcom era. On today’s episode, Andy gives us more background on eBay’s founding and what venture investing was like during the dotcom era. But Andy is also that very rarest of breeds, someone who became an entrepreneur AFTER an illustrious career as a venture capitalist. So Andy also tells us all about Wealthfront, one of the most interesting players in the modern personal investment space.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Summary Check out The Top Entrepreneurs Podcast here!Books recommended on this episode:Storming the Magic KingdomWalt DisneyUnconventional SuccessSay EverythingThe Wikipedia RevolutionThe InnovatorsThe Expanse  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The famous Google Chef, Charlie Ayers, remembers joining Google when it was about 50 employees, the company’s early growth, culture, and the unique role he played in shaping that culture.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you know the Napster story at all, then you know about the Shawn(Sean)s. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. But in my opinion, and in the opinion of a lot of other people, a name that you should be just as familiar with is Jordan Ritter. Napster was an incredible phenomenon, reaching tens of millions of users at its height, and though Jordan Ritter didn't invent Napster, he very much was responsible for scaling it and turning it into the phenomenon it became. In today's episode, Jordan recounts the entire Napster story, from its gestation in the w00w00 hacker collective (which, by the way, people talk a lot about the PayPal mafia, but an argument can be made for a w00w00 mafia) all the way through Napster's legal descent into oblivion. You might know Jordan as the cofounder of Cloudmark and Servio, and at the end of the episode, he talks about the big problems he's working to solve today.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There was one important trait that Google shared with the dotcoms: it wasn’t making very much money. It’s somewhat forgotten, given what would come later, but Google existed for several years without much of a business plan. The vision Larry and Sergey had sold the Venture Capitalists on involved a three-pronged strategy. First, Google would license its search technology to the major portals. Second, the company would sell its search technology as a product to enterprises. And third, there were some vague promises about selling ads against searches on its own website.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When Larry and Sergey first met, they didn’t like each other much...BIBLIOGRAPHY:In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives The Google Story How Google Works The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture Googled: The End of the World As We Know It The Google Guys: Inside the Brilliant Minds of Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/05/29/search-and-deploy http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/08/268521/index.htm  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

During the dot-com era in the late 90s, there were four different venture-backed startups (six, depending on how you count) that focused on the pet retail space. Most famous, or notorious, I guess was Pets.com, of the sock puppet fame, but today, we’re going to get some context and perspective on this moment in time from another player from this era. Joshua Newman was the founder of Petstore.com, which actually got started first, but eventually ended up getting acquired by Pets.com. I wanted to talk to Joshua because I think the Petstore.com is a really interesting lens to look at e-commerce companies in the dot-com era, the strategies they pursued and the unbelievable environment they existed in.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Before Snapchat Stories, before YouTube, in the dial-up era of the 90s, there were a select few who were experimenting with streaming video and interactive media on the web. The most prominent and notorious of these pioneers was Pseudo.com. Dennis Adamo was one of the co-founders of Pseudo.com.You can learn more about Dennis' VR startup here: Spaceoutvr.comThe articles about Josh Harris and Pseudo that I mention are here and here.And the documentary on Harris called We Live in Public is on iTunes.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode is a special event, a crossover episode with the Acquired Podcast, which you can find in your podcast directory by searching for the word Acquired, or by going to Acquired.fm. Acquired is hosted by Ben Gilbert, the Co-Founder of Pioneer Square Labs and David Rosenthal a Principal at Madrona Venture Group out in Seattle. To mash up our two models, we're going to talk about Yahoo's acquisition of Overture, and how that related to Google's ultimate success with Adwords. We talked about a lot of this with Gary Flake in episode 133, so, for a bit of context, here is that entire story. Please enjoy, and please, do check out the Acquired podcast at Acquired.fm  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gary Flake has been involved with search technology ever since he got turned on to this particular field in college. In this wide-ranging discussion, Gary lays out for us, basically, the history of search technology before Google, the impact of Google, and then, since he lived it, the notion of competing with Google. The reason why Gary can talk so in depth about all of this is that he was Yahoo's Chief Science Officer in the early 2000s, when Yahoo, via the infamous project Panama, and other initiatives, attempted to keep Google from taking over the entire search market. And because, prior to that, Gary was at Goto/Overture, he gives us basically the entire story of the birth of paid search as an industry. The story of Google is about two miracles. The first miracle is the Google algorithm that essentially solved search. And the second miracle is paid search... AdWords, AdSense, all of that... which is essentially the greatest advertising machine ever invented. But, not a lot of people remember: paid search

You all know MG Siegler. From TechCrunch’s most famous blogger to GV’s most affable venture capitalist, he has a lot to say about Apple, the business of blogging and where Silicon Valley is at in the modern era.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Elizabeth Osder is one of those digital media veterans who’s career has spanned the entire web era, from bringing the New York Times online (though, she got her native New Jersey online first by launching NJ.com a few years beforehand) all the way through her continued work with any number of digital media companies through her consultancy the Osder Group. In between, she has some amazing stories about working at Yahoo, launching the earliest of multimedia websites for folks like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the fallout from the dotcom bubble.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joe Schober was the longest serving employee of America Online, working there as an engineer, and later chief architect, from 1992 until just a few years ago. So, there literally couldn't be anyone better to walk us through AOL's history and many iterations. In this episode, we go back to the days when America Online was an underdog online service with only a couple hundred thousand users, through AOL's dominance in the early web era, the AOL/Time Warner merger... all of it, including an insider look at the chatrooms and AIM.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael March was the founder of Internet Direct, the first commercial ISP in Arizona. Michael gives us a first-hand account of the independent ISP industry that grew up around the country in the 1990s. AOL might have been the training wheels for the internet, but the Mom-n-Pop ISPs probably gave more Americans their first Internet experience than any of the online services.Bonus: Michael was an incidental witness to the first major commercial spam event on the Internet, a story that he relays at the end of this episode.And you can see Internet Direct featured in a really delicious infomercial from the time here.And you can follow Michael on twitter @cowmix  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Would it surprise you to learn that 1800Flowers was not only one of the first ecommerce pioneers but quite possibly, the first to be profitable in a meaningful way? You wouldn't be surprised if you knew the story of 1800Flowers and its founder, Jim McCann. Today we speak with Jim to hear that story, to learn about a company that was fearless in trying any new thing that came along... so long as it brought them closer to their customers. And, since Jim has been at this for quite a while, toward the end, he also tells us where he thinks commerce—in general—is going.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"So… Three things: A widescreen iPod with touch controls. A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod… a phone… and an internet communicator… An iPod, a phone… are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device! And we are calling it iPhone.”- Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007Those words have become so famous in the history of technology that I imagine a large percentage of listeners have them memorized. Ten years ago this Monday, January 9, Steve Jobs stood on stage and announced the iPhone to the world. It was the crowning achievement in the career of the greatest technologist of our time, the moment that the modern era of computing began.On the ten year anniversary of the birth of the iPhone, this is the story of that moment and the history of that device which can take a rightful place alongside the original Macintosh, the first IBM PC, the Apple I, the Altair 8800, the DEC PDP-8, the IBM System/360 and the ENIAC as one of most imp

The background, root causes and rough outline of the dotcom bubble. How it happened, why it happened... and why it's unlikely to happen again anytime soon.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.