???? – 1995retired
Apple IIe Card
“It taught old software to speak Mac, then quietly slipped out the classroom door.”
“Built stores in a browser, wrote in Lisp, left the web a little braver.”
Viaweb let anyone build and host their own online store from a web browser, no technical expertise required. Started in July 1995 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris (hiding behind the pseudonym John McArtyem), and Trevor Blackwell, it was partly written in Lisp — an eccentricity its fans wore like a badge. Graham claimed it was the first application service provider, and the name change from Webgen was pure pragmatism: it
In 1998, Yahoo! acquired Viaweb for about $49 million in stock and renamed it Yahoo! Store — less a death than a very successful marriage. Its real afterlife is cultural: through Graham's widely read essays and his venture career, Viaweb's example helped shape how Silicon Valley thinks about startups. Few discontinued products get to keep advising the living.
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“It taught old software to speak Mac, then quietly slipped out the classroom door.”
“64 kilobytes, 17 million homes, and one very long goodbye.”
“The computer left the room, but its ports stayed in every room since.”