I just bought and restored some older but well-built deck furniture. Each piece had a badge on it with a company name and URL, but the site is long gone. Popped it into the wayback machine and instantly learned all about the furniture, its maker, and how much it cost back in the day, which was really neat.

Lots of sites and companies that have gone out is business can still be found there when I need info they published in the past.

I went to IA a few moments ago to read a website that went offline months ago. IA had not saved that website.

Just for look at older versions of sites

I use it to find old software and games for my retro PC projects, currently working on a Windows XP gaming machine and maybe a DOS machine afterwards.

Without the Internet Archive it would have been a lot harder to find software.

And I love the wayback machine for looking up old websites.

Pretty much any book you want to read for free, you can borrow from them. I use it very frequently to grab sections of some book I’m interested in or want to cite but don’t have a physical copy of.

They also have awesome documentaries. The Mine Wars is, I think, one I saw not that long ago which was pretty sweet.

I do not donate to them for using all this awesome stuff, even though I probably should.

Wayback machine very often. I also like to watch The Computer Chronicles which is on IA. I can also get old installation ISOs from there.

reading defunct webcomics

Was searching for a 3d model to print some months ago.

I spotted one after a while but the download available was only for an updated version, and needed the old version.

Managed to pull off the old download link from the archive and get the file. I was pretty stoked that it worked.

There is an official polish Neon Genesis Evangelion voiceover that aired on TV once. All the other versions are with subtitles.

through time

Dude, you’re saying this as though the internet has been around for millennia. And as if you’ve never been to / heard of a library.

I’ve downloaded a ton of music videos to create my own self-hosted MTV station. I’ve downloaded music and books. I’ve used it to view non-paywalled (NYT) articles shared on Lemmy. I live in Philadelphia so I’ve used it to look up the earliest version of the “yellow pages” or “white pages” from the 1800s. I’ve searched for the videos they used to show us in elementary school on 16mm - stuff about the expansion of the USA, the national parks, history of my state or city, etc. I’ve used it to look up tv commercials from the 1980s for a bit of nostalgia and older tv shows that people have uploaded from their personal VHS collection. Some people just upload personal stuff that’s entirely mundane but voyeuristically interesting. And I’m certain I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s on there.

I use it for light novels like Overlord and Mushoku Tensei

I use the Wayback machine sometimes.

Norm MacDonald’s old youtube podcast is on there, while it’s hard to find anywhere else (they took it down from youtube when he got his Netflix show).

I’ve found public domain pictures on there, and I’ve spent time browsing very old music.

I went down a rabbithole of comparing evolving definitions of words by reading through generations of dictionaries. That would be hard to do without the IA. As well as comparing versions of books that I was considering buying.

Yeah, I wanted to read an article that I found in a search engine, but the og website had it removed now. I went to internet archive, but it didn’t have it fetched unfortunately.

It’s a trove of primary source material for historians. Even presuming you don’t personally use it yourself it’s a crucial archive of human history that all will benefit from