What Google, Amazon, and Apple were doing 20 years ago

Welcome to Dial Up, Mashable’s most excellent look at technology in the ’90s, from the early days of the World Wide Web to the clunky gadgets that won our hearts. 

A lot can change in 20 years. Of course, technology evolves over time. But for some of the biggest tech companies in the United States, the changes they’ve seen over the past two decades are about more than just new features and better computing power.

Google, Apple, and Amazon are collectively big enough to run the world in 2019. Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS form the backbone of just about every mobile device there is, while Amazon is the biggest name in retail and has an immensely profitable cloud computing platform, to boot.

But in 1999, things were a bit different. One of those companies had just brought its enigmatic co-founder back after years in exile in the hopes of becoming profitable again. Another was well on its way to dominance while still losing money, and the last was just trying to make things on the internet easier to find.

The one constant? In 1999, Google, Apple, and Amazon were all planting seeds that would grow them into the tech behemoths we know today. Here’s what they looked like 20 years ago.

Google was up and running, but still in its infancy

In 1999, you could go to Google.com and search for something on the internet. That’s still true two decades later, but a trip to the Wayback Machine reveals a much more limited version of the service we know and use daily now.

The logo looked a bit different and had a goofy exclamation mark, but it was still recognizable as Google. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Google’s story in 1999 is much more interesting behind the scenes. Cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were only months removed from buying the now-ubiquitous domain name the year before. By springtime, the company had a whopping eight employees and needed a new home after outgrowing the Menlo Park, California, garage it had operated out of until then.

Google moved into an office space in Palo Alto in March and then moved again, to a new space in Mountain View. Twenty years and immeasurable amounts of profit and growth later, Google still lives in Mountain View.

By the end of that year, Google had settled into what would become its permanent hometown and nabbed $25 million in outside funding. It would take the company less than a decade to go from a search engine with fewer than 10 employees to a tech titan with Gmail, YouTube, and Android to its name.

After some struggles, Apple found its groove again

Google and Amazon were both quintessential ’90s tech startups, but by 1999, Apple was a different story.

The brand behind the Macintosh computer had already existed for more than 20 years, but its dominance in the home computer space had dwindled by the end of the millennium. Windows blew up in the 1990s, and Apple failed to make waves with other products, like its aborted line of Newton PDAs. 

However, in 1997, Apple brought back cofounder Steve Jobs as CEO after 12 years away from the company. This kickstarted a process that created the Apple we know today. The release of the iMac in 1998 was massive, with the iconic all-in-one machines getting five new colors in 1999.

Maybe the most notable Apple event in 1999 proper was the unveiling of the iBook laptop. A predecessor to the MacBook, the iBook started with a distinctive clamshell design that’s pretty different from what we see with Apple laptops today. By far the most forward-thinking aspect of the iBook, though, was the ability to connect to the internet wirelessly. 

Yes, Apple had a wi-fi laptop as far back as 1999. The next several years would be a whirlwind for Apple, as iTunes, Safari, the iPod, the MacBook, and the iPhone all launched between 1999 and 2007. 

Amazon was blowing up, and the Jeff Bezos photo ops were better

By the end of the 1990s, Amazon was in the midst of building what would become the world’s largest online retail empire. Former hedge fund VP Jeff Bezos started it as an online bookstore five years prior and had already made it a public company by 1997.

Amazon and Bezos continued their meteoric rises throughout 1999. For consumers, the two biggest developments of the year were the conception of one-click purchasing and the start of the third-party marketplace. 

Amazon filed the patent for the former in 1999. It allowed people to buy things online with a little less hassle than before. The latter, meanwhile, was originally called zShops and allowed people to sell their own items through Amazon’s website. Now called Marketplace, it’s a pretty integral part of the modern Amazon experience.

Less auspicious was a partnership with Sotheby’s. Amazon connected with the auction company in the hopes of competing with eBay in the online bidding space, but the service was shut down just a few years later. 

Still, it’s hard to think of 1999 as anything but a success for Amazon. Online retail became more legitimate than ever before, and Bezos was named TIME‘s Person of the Year. The company’s star would only shine brighter over the years that followed, but so would criticism. Bezos eventually became the richest man in the world amid accusations of inhumane working conditions at Amazon facilities.