John and Antoine build Sportula Bar, an early Canadian web toolbar, amid start-up chaos.
Before toolbars became an everyday part of web browsing, John and Antoine were working on Sportula Bar, a small browser toolbar intended to make the web easier to use. Search, news, weather and useful shortcuts were supposed to be available in one place. The concept seemed straightforward. Building it and getting anyone to notice it were two different projects.
Behind the scenes was the familiar early-web combination of code, domain names, affiliate revenue and pay-per-click advertising. Some reports were encouraging, some perplexing, and no amount of enthusiasm could persuade every browser to behave the same way.
They weren't running an enormous technology empire. They were trying to build something genuinely useful with the resources available, plenty of trial and error, and enough hope to keep going.
In the cartoon, a tiny earnings figure becomes cause for an office celebration, until proxies, cookies and regional quirks remind everybody that the internet refuses to follow a sensible instruction manual.
Was Sportula Bar ahead of some later toolbar products? That's how John remembers the ambition, not a verified priority claim.
The toolbar was supposed to make the web easier. The web declined to reciprocate.