To celebrate 15 years of the web, The Observer highlights fifteen web sites that have changed the world (via Clay).

Not sure about Easyjet, given it’s UK-only, though I suppose along with sites that are now not particularly significant, but were mould-breaking at the time (such as Salon) they have been important trailblazers, with media and travel being two industries revolutionised (or at least turned upside-down and inside-out) by the Net. Ask any travel agent.

Meanwhile Time has what they claim are the 50 coolest web sites.

All this stuff, obviously, is in the eye of the beholder. And the more I think about it, the more I think such lists are pretty pointless. With hundreds of millions, if not billions of people online now, we all have our own priorities for what we want out of the Net, our own places to go. To try and narrow things down to a few dozen “coolest” is, dare I say it, lazy journalism.