Internet turns 30!

20 Mar, 2019 - BCB

Happy Birthday Internet! – Truly British Tech!

The World Wide Web turned 30 years old!

Its estimated that over four billion people, or 60 percent of the world’s population is online. It has come a very long way since Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing an information management system to facilitate info-sharing between science labs at universities and institutes around the world, a paper that would make him one of the most influential Englishmen of all time.

From those humble beginnings till today, nothing in life seems possible without the use of the internet. From booking tickets, paying bills, to googling everything and anything, we all ow Sir Tim Berners-Lee our gratitude. He truly is the father of technological innovation in modern times.

A few fun facts of the internet timeline:

March 1989 – Tim writes initial paper

1990 – First web server and website go live!

1993 – CERN makes its web tech available royalty free

March 1994 – YAHOO! Goes online as a directory, formerly known as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web

Sept 1995 – eBay is born as AuctionWeb as a side hobby of programmer Pierre Omidyar. First item sold was a laser pointer for $14.83

Oct 1995 – Amazon begins operations

1998 – GOOGLE IS FOUNDED

1999 – Napster, Alibaba and PayPal launch

March 2000 – .com bubble pops

2003 – Skype

2004 – Facebook and Firefox

2005 – First YouTube video “Me at the zoo”

2006 – Twitter

2007 – Apple releases iPhone. Bitcoin is first introduced

2008 – Google launches Chrome

2013 – Snowden discloses NSA’s mass surveillance

2014 – Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion

2016 – Mobile web browsing becomes more popular then desktop

2017 – FCC Kills net neutrality

2018 – over 40% internet activity is ‘fake’

2019 – Internet turns 30 – crazy ride!