Preparing to start a website for your company or organization? The odds are good that you are more interested in brand building, marketing, and ROI more than changing the world–but still, a little inspiration can go a long way toward achieving any goal. In the spirit of starting a new website, here are a few websites that have changed the world forever!

Google. The most obvious pick of all. A search engine that truly can find the highest-quality, most relevant results on the web really makes the web a lot more useful!

Amazon. E-commerce owes a lot of its success to Amazon.com. Founded back in 1994 as Cadabra, Amazon remains the largest e-commerce site on the web today.

Wikipedia. Though Wikipedia is often criticized for a perceived lack of oversight, accountability, and accuracy, the truth is that the idea to compile all human knowledge into one multilingual, easily accessible source was quite important.

Hotmail. What’s so special about Hotmail? It certainly isn’t the biggest email provider, and it wasn’t the first. However, Hotmail did change the world forever: they were the first web-based email provider to gain widespread popularity. Before hotmail, email accounts were tethered to specific computers–meaning an email sent to your work computer would be completely inaccessible unless you were at work, and a home email would be inaccessible unless you were at home.

Facebook. Another no brainer. Once again: Facebook was not the first website to do what it did, it just did it so well that it became the standard bearer.

Youtube. Hosting video used to be rather cost prohibitive, and YouTube was the first company to truly allow its users to upload video freely and free of charge. This obviously had a very profound affect on the way that we all use the internet.

Getting Started. If you’re ready to embark on your own website adventure–whatever your goals may be–then one of the first issues you will need to address is hosting. Visit RFE Hosting online to learn more about what hosting options may be right for your needs.