Before Facebook, free porn, and adorable cats talking in IM-speak took over the Internet, the Web was an untamed frontier full of mystery and wonder. As the nation embarked into the digital unknown in the late '80s and '90s, we were greeted with a bevy of companies who were going to help us experience everything this new "HTTP" landscape had to offer. So what did that look like? A lot of wild promises, for one. Some companies presented the Web as a portal where information would literally burst from of your computer screen and fly around your living room. Others just translated old ideas to a new medium, with quirky results. Let's take a little stroll back through the wild west-like years of the early Internet, and ask "Where are they now?" with some of Web 1.0's biggest players.

As you surf the internet, advertisers are tracking you, building a profile, and working on aiming specific ads right at you. Creepy? Somewhat! Luckily, Uncle Sam is working on allowing you to opt out of this tracking business.

Ah, GeoCities. Before Yahoo shut it down last year, it was a way for millions of people to create free websites. Launched in 1994, it was one of the first places to offer such a service, and had a big hand in the development of the web. And soon you'll be able to download GeoCities. All 900GB of it.

Verizon's speedy FiOS service makes most Internet connections look pretty lethargic, but now they are testing a new XG-PON2 system that's about 200 times faster than the speediest current FiOS G-PON service.