Windows 95: 31 years of the OS that launched with the Rolling Stones

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0300

It was the small hours of August 24, 1995, and there were lines outside computer stores. It wasn't Black Friday. It wasn't a console launch. It was an operating system launch. That genuinely happened — and it happened because Microsoft spent US$200 million to make the world stop and look at Windows 95.

The most anticipated product of 1995

The project was codenamed "Chicago" inside Microsoft. When the product shipped under its final name, it arrived with a marketing campaign the software industry had never seen. Microsoft licensed "Start Me Up" from the Rolling Stones, paying somewhere around US$3 million for the song alone — and played it in stores, in TV commercials and at launch events.

Netscape IPO — 31 years since the Big Bang of the commercial internet

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0300

On August 9, 1995, the NASDAQ stock exchange opened with an unusual problem: there were too many buyers for a stock that didn't even trade during the first two hours. Netscape Communications Corporation's shares were offered at $28 — already double the price the banks had originally planned — and when trading finally opened, the stock jumped straight to $71. It closed the day at $58.25, valuing a company that had never turned a profit at more than $2.9 billion.

The 90s on Locodigital

Windows 95: 31 years of the OS that launched with the Rolling Stones

The most anticipated product of 1995

Netscape IPO — 31 years since the Big Bang of the commercial internet