Louis Monier @ AltaVista: The Man Who Could Have Bought Google for $1 Million

09/15/20 • 26 min

On July 4th weekend of 1995, Louis Monier deployed a spider across the Internet to search for and catalog all existing web pages. He chose July 4th weekend because he was worried that his spider might break the Internet. And, to be fair, it actually did... at least for New Zealand. As in the entire country of New Zealand.

That initial crawl helped Monier develop the index that would eventually become AltaVista, the world'd leader in web search years before anyone would be using "google" as a verb.

This episode of Web Masters features host Aaron Dinin having a conversation with Louis as he shares the story of AltaVista in his own words and gives some incredible insights into what the earliest days of the Web were like.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

That initial crawl helped Monier develop the index that would eventually become AltaVista, the world'd leader in web search years before anyone would be using "google" as a verb.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

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Henry Copeland @ BlogAds: The Entrepreneur Who Turned Blogging Into a Business

These days, kids dream of becoming social media influencers in the same way they've always dreamed of becoming actors, athletes, and politicians. Those dreams are, in part, because of the fame and wealth that comes with online notoriety. But that wasn't always the case. The first social media influencers -- the early bloggers of the late 90s and early 2000s -- weren't creating content because it could make them rich. In fact, it was the opposite. They actively resisted monetizing on their popularity.

That began to change in 2002 when an entrepreneur named Henry Copeland launched a new advertising platform called BlogAds. BlogAds gave bloggers the ability to easily monetize on their content for the first time.

Adoption was slow at first. Bloggers didn't want to violate their personal space with intrusive ads. But, as the demand on bloggers grew alongside their audiences, more and more online influencers began realizing they had to turn their passion into a business if they wanted to survive. Lucky for them, BlogAds was there to help.

This episode of Web Masters features host Aaron Dinin having a conversation with Henry as he shares the story of BlogAds.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

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