???? – 2022retired
Internet Explorer
“It opened the internet for millions, then politely asked if Edge could take it from here.”
“It ranked the whole web so the rest of us could know where we stood.”
Founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, Alexa Internet spent decades telling the web who was who — traffic estimates, global rankings, and stats on more than 30 million websites. Acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock, it became the scoreboard a whole generation of site owners refreshed obsessively. By 2020, over 400 million people visited its site every month.
On May 1, 2022, Amazon discontinued the service, closing a 26-year chapter of web history. It left behind a quarter-century of rankings and the memory of a time when the internet kept a public leaderboard. Pour one out for the tool that told us exactly how popular we weren't.
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“It opened the internet for millions, then politely asked if Edge could take it from here.”
“The budget flagship that made everyone else's phone feel overpriced.”
“The last notch-holding Pro — small cutout, big camera, perfect exit.”