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!