The legendary "The Million Dollar Homepage" which sold 1000 × 1000 pixels at 1 pixel per doll and earned 100 million yen was like this

In 2005, a British-born student, Alex Tew, took a trip to the site "The Million Dollar Homepage"(Million · Dollar · Homepage) was launched. The homepage has "canvas" of 1000 pixels × 1,000 pixels, permanently the space on the site with a price of 10 × 10 pixels as a minimum unit at a price of 1 dollar per pixel (equivalent to 110 yen at the average rate at that time) A simple business model was used that sells the right that can be held to the company. Temporary was taken up as a big topic, in 2006 all pixels were sold out and this page that let Mr. Tew acquire a million dollars (about 110 million yen) as much money as the site name, then What was the state like?

Blog | Library Innovation Lab
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2017/07/21/a-million-squandered-the-million-dollar-homepage-as-a-decaying-digital-artifact/

The Million Dollar Homepage, which was born in 2005, still exists and can be viewed without changing the domain or changing the design. You can see the whole picture by accessing the site from the link below.

The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

The whole picture looks like this. There are areas for displaying titles etc on the top and bottom of the page, but large and small images are filled with Bissiri in the 1000 × 1000 pixel area in the middle part.


As you approach, you can see that it is full of large and small images and text as well. Links are set for each section, and it is possible to access by clicking. In other words, we could use The Million Dollar Homepage as one form of advertisement. By the way, the "catfish" at the top of the screen is broken.


The Million Dollar Homepage, which was opened at the end of August 2005, initially started only on acquaintances' reviews, but at the time we achieved sales of $ 1,000, we sent press releases to media companies. People gathered from the British BBC's picking up the site, in October of the same year, out of a total of 1 million pixels out of 999,000 pixels sold out, Mr. Tew was $ 999,000 (about 109.9 million I had earned income of yen). About 1,000 pixels, the auction was carried out on eBay of the net auction site, and it was made a successful bid for $ 31,800 (about 380,000 yen).

At that time, various opinions were coming about this site, and it was a state of pros and cons. As if there are media dealing like "darling in the Internet age" and "a good example of viral marketing", there are something disappointing among casinos in content, so cheap, fraudulent advertisements, spam, banner ads and pop-ups Wilderness "I recitedOpinion like the Washington Post was also raised.

In other words, Willi of The Million Dollar Homepage of the style of "selling" the "home" of the Internet as a homepage, "to sell", is that the pixel purchased once is a thing of eternity as long as the site is not closed There is. Even on this site, a catch phrase "Own a piece of internet history" (Let's hold part of the history of the Internet!) Is attached on the upper right of the page.


The Million Dollar Homepage, which is over 11 years away from the sale of pixels, now it is increasing that the hyperlinks that were set up in each section have been expired in many cases. The following table shows the status of the links color-coded. Of the 2816 links included in the page, the part indicated by vermillion is not accessible anymore, and the number is 547. The part indicated in light purple is in a state redirected to another site, domain sales page, etc., and the number is 489. And it seems that there are 1780 green links that can still be accessed.


There is a case that the site of the Internet can not be accessed by changing the URL due to domain change as well as site closure. Also, even though the domain itself is still there, sometimes the access will be lost simply because the landing page from The Million Dollar Homepage is gone because of consolidation and improvement of the site contents. There are cases in which organizations such as "archive.org" are archiving web pages already, but it seems to say that they are asking a big question on the theme "preservation of contents" on the Internet.