[brundolf]

Remember that the prank preceded the mainstream web, and MS PR clearly went to great lengths to cover it up. I don't think the internet was "remembering everything" yet at that point

[iso1210]

Usenet would have, there would be mentions on a pro or anti (mainly anti) microsoft group about it. It was 1996, not the stone age

Google has lost a lot of old posts from those days, but I'd be surprised if it would have lost all of them.

[dannyw]

Google's public index is just the short head, maybe even less than 5% of the internet by pages. Old stuff is more or less all pushed out unless its popular.

[lupire]

April 1996 was a long time ago, almost the dawn of the Internet as it relates to Microsoft.

Internet Explorer only launched in 1995, and the anti-Linux Halloween Documents were 1998.