One Billion!

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

March 21, 2020

We started this site over Memorial Day weekend in 2002, more than seventeen years ago. I believe we have produced content every day since then, and, as with most things in life, persistence is eventually rewarded. We have records of traffic via Google Analytics that go back to early 2006, so before that we have to estimate. While the early numbers aren’t exact, we can say for sure that some time in the last month or two we had our one billionth page view. One billion!

Long-time readers likely have heard this story, but Scott and I have been writing partners dating back to 1990, if I remember correctly. After setting up this site on the original Blogger.com, I gave Scott the URL and said I thought we should write on the site together. Scott checked it out overnight, and the next day said: “This looks like fun, and I think it will be worth doing even if no one reads the stuff I write except you. But I have to tell you, I think the idea that we could ever have any readers for this thing is a pathetic fantasy.” Happily, it didn’t turn out that way, and of course, I have often reminded Scott of this exchange. We invited Paul, my college roommate, to join us that Summer, so he was in on the ground floor, and Steve joined us in 2011. Our traffic has escalated since then.

(Snip)

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There are those who wish this had never happened!