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Beginning
The World Wide Web begins as a CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) project called ENQUIRE, initiated by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee. Other names considered for the project include “The Information Mesh” and “The Mine of Information.”
AOL launches its Instant Messenger chat service and begins welcoming users with the iconic greeting “You’ve got mail!” -
First web browser
42% of American adults have used a computer.
World’s first website and server go live at CERN, running on Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer, which bears the message “This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER DOWN!”
Tim Berners-Lee develops the first Web browser WorldWideWeb.
Archie, the first tool to search the internet is developed by McGill University student Alan Emtage. -
World Wide Web becomes public
CERN places its World Wide Web technology in the public domain, donating it to the world.
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) releases Mosaic 1.0, the first web browser to become popular with the general public. “The web as we know it begins to flourish,” Wired later writes.
Marc Andreessen proposes the IMG HTML tag to allow the display of images on the Web. -
First web services
18 million American homes are now online, but only 3% of online users have ever signed on to the World Wide Web.
Microsoft releases Windows 95 and the first version of Internet Explorer.
Match.com, the first online dating site, launches.
Web hosting service GeoCities launches. -
A new century for World Wide Web
43% of internet users say they would miss going online “a lot,” up from 32% in 1995.
40 million Americans – or 48% of internet users – have purchased a product online.
The average internet user spends 83 minutes online.
Jimmy Wales launches Wikipedia. Users write over 20,000 encyclopedia entries in the first year.
Social networking site Friendster.com launches, but is quickly overtaken by Facebook. -
Social networking and new apps
Apple launches the iTunes Music Store with 200,000 songs at 99¢ each. The store sells one million songs in its first week.
Skype launches a voice-over-IP calling and instant messaging service
Professional networking site LinkedIn launches.
MySpace.com is founded and adopted by musicians seeking to share music and build their fan bases.
Mark Zuckerberg launches the facebook.com.
Facebook goes on to become the world’s biggest social networking site, with over a billion users worldwide. -
Youtube, the first of the video-sharing websites
YouTube is founded on Valentine’s Day. The first video, an explanation of what’s cool about elephants, is uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim on April 23. Google acquires the company a year later. -
Smartphones genesis
Apple releases its first iPhone. A year later Google releases the Chrome Web browser and HTML5 is introduced. Apple launches its App Store with 552 applications. -
A new decade with more information and more social networking
Social photo-sharing sites Pinterest and Instagram launch.
Google+ launches.
Facebook reaches 1 billion monthly active users, making it the dominant social network worldwide.
The Internet Society founds the Internet Hall of Fame to “celebrate people who bring the internet to life.” -
Intelligence Web and Web 2.0 rise
Scientific research explores the roles and makes use of artificial intelligence and information technology for new products, services that are empowered by the World Wide Web. Intelligence web is introduced and widely used all over the world.
Web 2.0 signaled a change in which the world wide web became an interactive experience between users and Web publishers, rather than the one-way conversation that had previously existed. New tools made it possible for nearly anyone to contribute
