http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2148578/million-dollar-homepage-felled
William Eazel
vnunet.com
14 Jan 2006
The final 1,000 pixels on the Million Dollar Homepage sold for $38,100
earlier this week, netting 21 year old UK student Alex Tew the final
amount needed to cross the US$1 million target barrier.
However, disaster struck early yesterday when the site was targeted by
electronic attackers and knocked off the web for some extended period
of time by a DDoS attack.
The Million Dollar Homepage, found at milliondollarhomepage.com, had
been online since September last year, and is one of those "wish I'd
thought of that ideas" initially dreamt up by Tew as a way of paying
his university expenses.
The idea was simple. Tew launched a website, which he promised to keep
online for at least five years, he then divided the homepage into a
million pixels and sold each pixel for US$1 as advertising space.
Many advertisers are understood to have bought pixels as a joke, but
the idea soon took off, and on the back of a wave of publicity Tew's
site was soon receiving 500,000 unique visitors per day, with much of
that traffic clicking through to advertisers.
Indeed, the site's total earnings actually netted Tew US$1,037,100 - a
figure which has been the catalyst for the appearance of a number of
other copycat sites.
Tew may be the newest internet-made millionaire, but armed with only a
basic web hosting package, the extra fees charged for protection
against mounting DDoS attacks, will soon be eating into his cash pile.
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