Before Google Maps and before Yelp, people found a plumber or an old friend's number on Switchboard. The site put national white pages and yellow pages online, free to search. It grew inside Banyan Systems, a Massachusetts networking company, and became its own company in 1996. America Online used it for its directory service. When Switchboard filed to go public in late 1999, it was still majority owned by Banyan.

Born Inside Banyan

Dean Polnerow built Switchboard as a project at Banyan, and he stayed on as president when it was spun into its own company. Printed phone books were thick, local, and out of date by the time they arrived. Switchboard offered every listing in the country, searchable in seconds. It made money from ads and from licensing its directory to other web portals. Merchants could pay for better placement, much like a big yellow pages ad.

Fifteen Dollars, Then InfoSpace

Switchboard priced its IPO at $15 a share in March 2000, the same month the Nasdaq peaked. The crash soon cut its ad revenue, and the stock fell far below its offer price. Switchboard trimmed costs, leaned on licensing deals, and kept its directory business going for four more years. In 2004 InfoSpace, another directory and search company, bought Switchboard for $7.75 a share in cash.

Cover: Plate 110 from The Plan of Chicago, 1909, Daniel Hudson Burnham. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a city street plan (a directory of a city).