Mangago rabbit hole?

Wayback machine is a website that lets you see old versions of web pages from the past. Think of it as a time machine for websites. Now if you click on it and search for mangago, you can browse different snapshots of the website throughout the years.

For those who don't know, a snapshot is an archived copy of a webpage taken on a specific date, letting you see what the site looked like at that moment in time. And by the way these snapshot pages can take a while to load because archived snapshots often contain a lot of old data.

Anyways...

What's interesting is that there are two mangago domains:
mangago.com and mangago.me
Today mangago mainly uses the .me domain but the .com domain is also associated with the site. However the two domains have completely different histories in the wayback machine.

If you search mangago.me the archived snapshots begin in 2014. Pretty straightforward and normal.

But if you search mangago.com, things start to get interesting.

Most of the archive begins around 2010 where it looks like a normal manga website connected to the current mangago. One clue is that it even has the same favicon (the little icon shown in the browser tab).

Then in 2011 the domain suddenly points to a Chinese website that sells pet products which I didn't expect at all... I genuinely wonder if it's some sort of mistake because I can't imagine this website selling pet products.

Anyhow! Later another snapshot shows the manga website again, almost as if nothing had happened.

And then there's the weirdest part. There is a one very single snapshot dated 2004. When you open it, the page is almost completely broken. Most of the images no longer load so you can't really tell what the website originally looked like. I'll include a screenshot down below but there isn't much to see.

The only useful information is in the footer. It lists the business name as BOHYUN along with a customer support number, a Seoul address and a Value-Added Telecommunications Business Registration which is common for online services in South Korea. It also includes links such as SafeNet Rating, Youth Protection Policy, Privacy Policy and a Youth Access Blocking Program.

If you look online into those terms, you'll find that they were commonly found on Korean websites such as online gaming sites, forums, streaming services and especially websites with age-restricted or adult content where youth protection measures were legally required. Of course that doesn't prove exactly what this website was but it does give an idea of the kind of online service it may have been.

The fact that mangago.com was a Korean website from 2004, then a manga website in 2010, then a Chinese pet store in 2011 and then turns back into a manga website again makes its archive history feel almost like a rabbit hole. It looks as though the domain changed hands or was repurposed multiple times over the years. God knows...

There is also another snapshot that redirecs to a website called "Mangaset" in 2011 (I might be getting the years wrong tho, I don't remember anymore as of now that I'm typing this). From what I could find it appears to have been a website that posted manga news and updates.

I'll leave the wayback machine link below so you can try all of this yourself. Search for mangago.com and mangago.me, compare the timelines and see what you find. If you have a bit of patience while the snapshots load, you might end up going down the same rabbit hole I did or maybe you'll spot something I completely missed. Have fun!

https://web.archive.org/

Snapshot of mangago.com in 2004: