etoy

etoy was created in 1994 by seven original founders whose backgrounds included sound production, art, design, law, public relations and corporate identity. From the outset, the group adopted a corporate structure and visual identity: the members merged their individual identities into a single digital identity and appeared publicly as etoy.AGENTS.

The group initially developed performances and interventions connected to rave and techno culture. In 1996, etoy carried out digital hijack, an internet art project that manipulated the results of early search engines including Lycos, AltaVista and Infoseek. Searches for selected popular terms led users to pages informing them that they had been "hijacked". The project received the Golden Nica in the World Wide Web category of the Prix Ars Electronica that year.

Beginning in 1998, etoy sold etoy.SHARES to investors and supporters as part of its corporate art model. Contemporary reporting described shareholders as receiving voting rights concerning future projects.

In 1999, the group's use of the etoy.com domain led to a legal dispute with the online toy retailer eToys.com. etoy subsequently turned the conflict into the online project Toywar, which attracted international media attention and support from internet activists. The dispute ended in January 2000 when eToys withdrew its lawsuit. The conflict is discussed in greater detail below.