The Guides – Jerry Yang: "When this shot was taken, it was just David and me and a handful of people in this small office in Sunnyvale. We clearly didn't think that things would happen the way they did. We used to say, 'Hey, if the Internet takes off and we stay the best at doing what we're already doing' – showing people stuff on the Internet that they would be interested in – 'this could be huge.'"
– Interview by Jeff Howe
Timeline: 1996 82 percent of Americans have heard of the Web, up from 45 percent in 1995.
Feb: PointCast begins beta testing a screensaver that delivers data from the Internet to your desktop, heralding the abbreviated age of "push."
Mar: Palm Computing rolls out the Palm Pilot. At $349, the high-end model has 512K of memory and no backlight.
Bill Gross founds dotcom incubator Idealab, burning through $800 million in eight months. Over the next eight years, it spawns 50 companies.
Polaroid's first 1-megapixel digicam hits. The price tag: a cool $3,695.
Apr: Yahoo! raises $35 million in its IPO, as shares triple on the first day of trading. Market cap hits $1 billion.
Browser wars: Netscape's share of the market peaks at 87 percent; Explorer begins its climb from 4 percent.
Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is arrested. In his manifesto, he blames computers and technology for society's woes.
Dec: Alan Greenspan warns of "irrational exuberance" in the stock market. Nobody cares.
EBay's AuctionWeb receives its millionth bid and shortens name to just eBay.
Yang (left) with Yahoo! cofounder David Filo in their Sunnyvale, California, office in June 1996. Corbis
10 Years That Changed the World
| Intro
A Decade of Genius and Madness
