I Googled for the lyrics to “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and up came [this ancient HTML document from the days of Web 2.0](https://stuff.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/poetry/poems/meanGrinch.html).
I’ve noticed that Google will often point me to these very old, rudimentary webpages that are 20 years old or so, and often hosted at American universities like MIT.
So my question is, why do these websites exist in the first place, and why do they still exist?
In: 2187
Two reasons:
* Before the web got commercial it was developed and used mainly in academic circles by universities and research labs. So a lot of the oldest websites, discussion boards, email servers, personal pages (of students, professors) etc. are hosted at those places.
* Servers owned by companies will eventually be shut down when they are no longer profitable or the company itself goes out of business. Universities have no such urgency to remove old content, and with the minimum amount of funding (basically one underpaid grad student) such stuff can stay online forever.
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