Random History Facts of the Internet

The "World Wide Web" Was Created

Mar 1, 1989

The World Wide Web was invented by an English scientist, named Tim Berners-Lee, in March of 1989.

WorldWideWeb Internet Browser

Dec 20, 1990

Tim-Berners Lee created the first internet browser on December 20, 1990 called WorldWideWeb, later renamed to Nexus. At the time, the WorldWideWeb browser was the only method available to access the internet. The browser was discontinued in January 14, 1994.

Netscape

Apr 4, 1994

Mosaic Communications Corporation released the Netscape internet browser on April 4, 1994 by Marc Andreesen, Jim Clark, and James Barksdale. It became unsupported as of March 1, 2008 with version 9.0.0.6 as the last released version.

Amazon.com

Jul 5, 1994

Jeff Bezos released Amazon.com on July 5, 1994 as an e-commerce business for buying and selling items online. With over 200 million user accounts created at Amazon.com, it surpasses eBay by about double, but sits behind Apple.

Internet Explorer

Aug 16, 1995

Internet Explorer was released by Microsoft on August 16, 1995. Since Windows 95 OSR2, Internet Explorer was included with every Windows operating system as its default browser. It was later replaced by Microsoft Edge on November 12, 2015.

eBay

Sep 3, 1995

Pierre Omidyar created eBay on September 3, 1995 as an e-commerce business for buying, selling, and auctioning items online. eBay sits behind Amazon.com as one of the most widely-used e-commerce websites.

Opera

Jan 1, 1996

Opera Software released the Opera internet browser in 1996 by a large Norwegian telecommunications company called Telenor. Opera is most known for its early features that were converted over to later internet browsers

Napster

Jun 1, 1999

John Fanning, Shawn Fanning, and Sean Parker created Napster as a peer-to-peer, or P2P, file sharing website. Napster was mainly used for sharing music in the form of MP3 files. The website became defunct on September 3, 2002 as a result of many copyright infringement issues, and was later bought by Rhapsody in December of 2011.

Firefox

Sep 23, 2002

The Mozilla Corporation released the Firefox internet browser on September 23, 2002. As of January of 2016, Firefox has been considered the second most popular internet browser, with around 9% to 16% of general usage around the world.

Safari

Jan 7, 2003

Apple Inc. released the Safari internet browser on January 7, 2003. As of June of 2012, Safari was considered the third most-used internet browser worldwide, with a percentage at about 16%.

Facebook

Feb 4, 2004

Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin created Facebook on February 4, 2004 as a social media website.

YouTube

Feb 14, 2005

Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim created YouTube on February 14, 2005 as a video blogging website.

Gmail

Feb 7, 2007

Google Inc. created Gmail on February 7, 2007 as a free, web-based email server. As of June of 2012, Gmail became the most widely used web-based email provider, reaching at 425 users around the world.

Google Chrome

Sep 2, 2008

Google Inc. released the Google Chrome internet browser on September 2, 2008. As of December of 2015, 58% of the world uses Google Chrome as a desktop browser, while 45% use it on their smartphones and other devices.