E-Trade

Hot or Not launched on a free E-Trade PC hidden under a desk

Hot or Not first ran on a junk PC Hong got free from E-Trade for opening a $500 account. As traffic exploded they scrambled to a Sun machine and leased through Rackspace, with Larry Page personally tipping them off to use cheap Rackable rack-mount systems.

“Actually, when we started Hot or Not, when it first started taking off, it was built on a PC I got for free from E-Trade, I think, for opening an account with $500 in it. It was like the dingiest machine. It had no memory or anything, but it could run as a server. Not very well, but it got us online, right?”