H2g2 - History

History

h2g2 was founded on 28 April 1999 as the Earth edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the author of the series, Douglas Adams, and his friends and colleagues at The Digital Village. "h2g2" serves as a handy abbreviation for that rather lengthy title, with the advantage that most people are able to spell it. The site was a runner-up for Best Community Site in the Yell.com awards in 2000.

Like other dot-com companies, Adams' company TDV ran into financial difficulties towards the end of 2000 and eventually ceased operations. In January 2001, the management of the site was taken over by the BBC, and moved to bbc.co.uk (then known as BBCi). During this takeover there was a lengthy intermission during which the site was unavailable, which the community refers to as "Rupert" — a reference to the serendipitous naming of the fictional tenth planet in Adams' novel Mostly Harmless. Members created an alternative site, "n2g2", standing for "Nowhere To Go To", to maintain their community while the site was down, and to complain about changes implemented by the BBC.

21 April 2005 marked the launch of h2g2 Mobile, an edition of the guide produced specifically for PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and some mobile phones that could access the internet, so that people could read h2g2 entries while on the move. This was done because people wanted h2g2 to be much like the Hitchhiker's Guide described in the books — a mobile, electronic device that anyone could read from anywhere. An earlier attempt at a WAP phone based version of h2g2 started in December 2000 only to end when the BBC took over the site in January 2001.

The site was redesigned for the BBC by Aerian Studios in 2011, bringing it in line with the general appearance of other BBC websites, while maintaining a degree of the site's old character.

On 24 January 2011, the BBC announced cuts of 25% to its online budget, resulting in a £34 million less investment into the site. A number of sites are to be closed including BBC Switch, BBC Blast and 6-0-6. As part of this exercise, the BBC chose to "dispose of" h2g2 by selling it to someone else.

On 21 June 2011, it was announced the winning bid was a joint bid put together by three parties: Robbie Stamp, h2g2c2 ('The h2g2 Community Consortium') and the owners of Noesis Systems Ltd (Brian Larholm and Alyson Larholm)

On 31 August 2011, it was announced the community was sold to Not Panicking Ltd, a company founded by Robbie Stamp, Brian Larholm and Alyson Larholm, as well as The h2g2 Community Consortium.

On 3 October 2011 at approximately 09:30 local time, the BBC incarnation of h2g2 officially closed, leaving only an announcement reading "H2G2 has now left the BBC. The new owners of H2G2 are currently preparing the site for relaunch. Soon you will find The Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything at www.h2g2.com."

The post-BBC version of the site went live again on 16 October 2011. During the 13 days of downtime many researchers migrated onto part of the Noesis forums specially created for them, known as "s2g2 - somewhere to go to". During this time, and afterwards, intensive naming of the downtime took place. Often referred to as "the FOOP" other names such as "the interregnum" and "the intereditorium" were also common, both amongst the researchers and the volunteers.