The Silicon Underground

Some dotcom-era startups were just bad ideas, and others were bad timing. I think Webvan was in the bad timing category. Today there is nothing especially odd about the idea of ordering groceries over the Internet. Several successful companies use some kind of variant of that business model today with success. On April 26, 2001, Webvan had an especially bad day. It pulled out of the Atlanta market, laid off 885 employees, and planned a 1-for-25 reverse stock split in a desperate attempt to keep its stock listed. This was just 13 days after its CEO, George Shaheen, resigned, on April 13, 2001.

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Clippy was the unofficial nickname of the office assistant, a feature present in Microsoft Office 97 and Microsoft Office 2000. His proper name was Clippit, but nobody I knew called him that. Clippit, or Clippy, was inspired by Microsoft Bob, a misguided attempt to make Microsoft Office friendlier, more helpful, and easier to use. But most frequently, it was more annoying than any of those other things. On April 11, 2001, Microsoft announced the Office Assistant would no longer be enabled by default in future versions. Clippy was retiring. And there was much rejoicing.

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On April 4, 1975, childhood friends Bill Gates, then 19, and Paul Allen, then 22, founded Microsoft, a company that makes computer software. Originally based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Microsoft relocated to Washington State in 1979 and from there grew into a major multinational technology corporation. In 1987, the year after Microsoft went public, Gates became the world’s youngest billionaire at age 31.

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AnandTech was an online computer hardware magazine founded in April 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi. Shimpi remained CEO and editor-in-chief until August 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief. The website was a source of hardware reviews for off-the-shelf components and exhaustive benchmarking, targeted towards computer-building enthusiasts. Its debut article, released April 3, 1997, was a review of AMD’s then-new K6 processor.

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Readers of a certain age will remember CompUSA, a defunct big-box computer retailer. What happened to CompUSA? It went out of business, then came back as an undead brand, then went away again.

In some ways, CompUSA was the epitome of 1990s computer retail. It had huge big box stores with aisles of software and upgrades. It sold desktop computers, including its own house brand, Compudyne, manufactured for CompUSA by Acer. But the business model didn’t work as well in the 21st century.

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On February 22, 1987, American pop artist Andy Warhol died at the age of 58 in New York City of irregular heartbeat following gallbladder surgery.

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