Example.com Gets a Flashy Redesign With Rotating Languages
This placeholder site now cycles through six languages every 5 seconds — here's why that's smart.
Example.com, the website you've probably seen in instruction manuals, just got its biggest redesign in over 20 years. On September 28, 2026, it changed from a simple English page to one that automatically rotates through six languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish. Every five seconds, the text fades out and the next language fades in, letter by letter. It also added a little book icon.
Why bother? The site's owner, IANA (the group that manages web addresses), says most visitors are automated bots, not people. By putting the extra content in a separate file, bots that don't run JavaScript skip it, saving bandwidth. The core message stays the same: this domain is for examples only, not for real services.
The site has evolved since its 1999 debut. The earliest version from 2002 listed reserved domain names with a table layout. By 2003, it added a link to RFC 2606, the official document explaining reserved domains. Over the years, the wording simplified to what we see today. This latest change is mostly cosmetic but shows how even placeholder pages get modernized.
For everyday users, this doesn't change much — you still shouldn't use example.com for anything real. But it's a fun peek at how the internet's behind-the-scenes infrastructure gets updated. And if you ever wondered why example.com exists, now you know: it's a courtesy to keep documentation clear.
- Example.com now shows its message in six languages, switching every 5 seconds with a fade effect.
- The redesign saves bandwidth because most visitors are bots that don't load the extra JavaScript.
- The site has been around since 1999 and is only meant for examples, not real use.
Why It Matters
Shows how even tiny, unseen parts of the internet get smarter to save data and energy.