Internet Fossils

I was just thinking today about the tripod.com Nirvana website I made when I was in 7th grade and decided to set out to look for it. When I found it I was startled-- when was I in 7th grade, 1998? And its still around? I explored a little bit-- of course I had no webspace of my own back then, so all of the linked photographs were gone, but a lot of the content still remained: guitar tabs for all of Nirvana's albums are still up, as are the lyrics for a couple of them, and the text from Kurt's suicide note. The most interesting thing I re-discovered was the guestbook. The latest entry was from July of 2006-- WHAT??

It seems impossible to me that, in the face of the internet today, people still somehow find websites like mine, internet relics from an earlier, simpler time. I kind of thought that, like my OpenDiary account from 6th grade, my Nirvana website would've been cleared out and deleted to make room for more sophisticated websites or, you know, ones that have been updated in the past 8 years. Also: how does tripod.com still exist?? I remember when you would visit a Tripod page and one pop-up would come up, but this was the case with most all personal websites back then. Now when you visit you get a number of pop-ups, and there are even embedded ads on the webapges themselves that play audio you as a visitor can't control! It's hard to believe sites as obnoxious as Tripod still exist in the face of much-improved personal webpage services that don't come with 1,000 ads built in.