If you’re like me and have a short attention span (SQUIRREL!), then this History of the World Wide Web post is for you. If however, you like to jump down rabbit holes and want more information that’s detailed and fun I recommend Pew Research Center World Wide Web Timeline, but take a quick look here first.

The Early Years

1989 The History of the World Wide Web begins. Tim Berners-Lee, invents the internet, despite what you might have heard it wasn’t invented by a politician.

1992 In August of 1991 CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced what would become the beginnings of the World Wide Web with their research-based website that began operation in 1992.

1993 Search was born with ALIWEB, and MTV developed the first landing page.

1994 Hotwire successfully posted the first banner ad. I rue the day.

1995 Internet Explorer came online, and Flash allowed developers to add shapes and animation to websites.

1998 Google launched, and at that time Google wasn’t a verb, Google it.

A New Millennium

2000 The new money for the modern world – PayPal charged ahead and changed how we pay.

2003 WordPress made the world and the World Wide Web a much nicer place for bloggers. Apple opened iTunes.

2004 Social networking exploded with Myspace and a new little start-up named Facebook.

2005 Broadband rules and surpasses dial up. Don’t you miss the sounds of dial-up? Okay, maybe not.

2007 The first iPhone revolutionizes mobile applications.

2008 Google Chrome opened for business.

2009 Our heads are in the clouds and so is our stored information.

A Decade of Change

2010 Responsive design answers how to adapt websites to fit multiple sizes of screens. Pinterest and Instagram come online and make it all about the visuals.

2011 LinkedIn links up with more than 100 million users and then heads to the New York Stock Exchange.

2012 That little start-up Facebook hits one billion users. E-commerce tops one trillion.

2013 Twitter files for IPO and more than 50 percent of Americans now bank online.

2014 – 2017 It might be time to take a deep breath and think about how we use the web and where we go from here. With all the data breaches over the last three years, and the proliferation of fake news, it’s becoming clear something needs to be done to protect this resource. What does the inventor of the World Wide Web have to say about its future? USA Today, Inventor of the WWW warns of the perils we face. 

Photo Credit: geralt ID: bb483dc0962647405e Provider: Pixabay