Internet History: Timeline 1990–1999 (Part 4)

Internet History: Timeline 1990–1999 (Part 4)

The true era of the World Wide Web

The 1990s were characterized by advances in the digital world and groundbreaking developments in Internet technology. This period also saw the emergence of future digital giants that shaped the online world as we know it today, including eBay, Amazon, PayPal and Google.

1990

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) was founded by Karen Banks and her staff. This non-profit organization was a network of global experts whose goal was to create and maintain a free and transparent Internet network. The entire society should benefit from this technology and not just large companies.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

In 1990, Dr. Stephen Kent, interested in open networks and their security. Until 1999, he worked to secure these networks and perfect their protection methods for safer use.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

This year is also the beginning of Internet development in Latin America. From 1990 to 1999, Ida Holz led a group of computer scientists and experts on the path to developing various computer networks throughout Latin America.

Source: Lacnic

The Academic Internet Network of Sri Lanka was deployed. The LEARN network was founded and managed by Gihan Dias.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

Linux was created by Linus Torvalds. The concept of open source software is brought into the mainstream and from then on exists as part of the idea of ​​the free Internet.

Source: Linfo

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is founded by John Perry Barlow and his associates. The aim of this organization is to provide legal support to technologies and individuals in the event of legal abuses related to the new technologies that are being developed.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

1990 is the year the world saw the first version of Photoshop. It was revolutionary photo editing software the likes of which no one had ever seen before. John and Thomas Knoll are the two brothers behind Photoshop. Thirty years later, Photoshop is still the most popular image editing program.

Source: PopularMechanics.com

People
Karen Banks – Date of birth unknown. This British networking pioneer worked at ISP GreenNet, where she led the GnFido gateway. She also founded the APC and the WNSP (Women’s Networking Support Program). This organization was the first to provide web access to United Nations delegates.
Source: Wikipedia
Stephen Kent – born 1951 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This computer scientist is best known for his work on network security. Kent worked at BBN Technologies, where he was the first chief scientist to develop security technologies. He developed many Internet security standards.
Source: Wikipedia
Ida Holz – born 1935 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She was a computer researcher, scientist, engineer and professor. She was one of the Internet pioneers in Latin America and helped create the Internet in her country in the early 1990s. She then helped connect the entire continent through various projects.
Source: Ida Holz
Gihan Dias – Date of birth unknown. A computer scientist and engineer working at the University of Moratuwa. A pioneer of the Internet in Sri Lanka. He helped develop and lead the Lanka Education and Research Network.
Source: Wikipedia
Linus Torvalds – born 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. One of the most influential software developers to develop Linux operating systems. This is also the kernel for Chrome OS and Android. He also created Git and Subsurface. Torvalds is one of the biggest protagonists of the open source internet and open source software.
Source: Wikipedia
John Perry Barlow – born 1947 in Cora, Wyoming. Although he had no technical knowledge of computers or the Internet, he was instrumental in their development. He was a libertarian and worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He died in 2018.
Source: Wikipedia
Thomas Knoll – born 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This software developer is best known for developing Photoshop. He began developing various image processing techniques in 1988. He showed these core routines to his brother and together they worked on developing Photoshop for Adobe Systems.
Source: Wikipedia
John Knoll – born 1962 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Knoll was chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic and visual effects supervisor. In addition to creating Photoshop with his brother Thomas, he also worked on the special effects for the original Star Wars trilogy.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
APC – The Association for Progressive Communication was founded in 1990. This network of organizations was created to provide Internet access, applications and communication infrastructure to people involved in the development of sustainability, green initiatives, human rights, etc. APC members have also been involved in developing the Internet for their countries.
Source: Wikipedia
Linux – Linux includes various operating systems similar to Unix. It is an open source Linux kernel family developed by Linus Torvalds and comes with supporting system software, libraries and the Linux kernel. Linux is widely used for network servers, hosts and other technical purposes.
Source: Wikipedia
Open source – Open source software is a computer program that is free to use, license, modify, study and copy. The code of this software is shared openly so that other programmers and developers can modify it in any way. Linux was the first major open source software.
Source: Wikipedia
Photoshop – Photoshop was developed by Thomas and John Knoll. The brothers then sold it to Adobe Systems, which released it in 1990. Adobe is a raster photo editor that evolved over time and became the standard for editing raster graphics and digital artwork as a whole.
Source: Wikipedia

The World Wide Web goes public

1991

The year marks an important milestone in the history of the Internet. The World Wide Web (WWW) went public. On August 6thThIn 1991, the world saw the launch of the first website. It was created by Tim Berners Lee, who was working at CERN at the time.

Symbolically, the site was all about the WWW project and how it could change the world. Lee didn’t want to patent his work – he wanted to share this technology with the world.

Source: The next web

At the same time, Internet technology was integrated into EuropaNet, the backbone of the European Internet. This network would then use TCP/IP. This project was created by Dai Davies.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

The development of the Internet in the Netherlands had begun. Kees Neggers began his work by founding the first Internet provider in Europe.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

The Pretty Good Privacy software was developed by Philip Zimmermann. This email encryption software suite has been made available to the public for free. Although it was originally developed for human rights organizations and individuals, PGP reaches the public and becomes the most popular email encryption tool.

Source: Springer link

The Gore Act was introduced by Al Gore in 1991. Also known as the High-Performance Computing and Communications Act, aimed at creating and managing the National Research and Education Network and high-performance computing in general. The Gore Act allocated a total of $600 million for this purpose and also led to the creation of the Information Superhighway.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

People
Dai Davies – Date of birth unknown. A British Internet pioneer who upgraded EuropaNet with Internet technology. In addition to his work in establishing the pan-European research network, he was instrumental in the development of new communication and data transmission systems that improved the speed of data transmission.
Source: Internet Hall of Fame
Kees Neggers – born 1947 in Breda, Netherlands. His work in developing and connecting research and educational networks internationally and in the Netherlands was instrumental in the development of the European Internet. Neggers was also director of EARN in the Netherlands.
Source: Wikipedia
Philip Zimmerman – born 1954 in Camden, New Jersey. A well-known professor, cryptographer and computer scientist. He is best known as the developer of Pretty Good Privacy software, the most popular email encryption system. He also worked on the development of the Zfone and ZRTP encryption protocols.
Source: Wikipedia
Al Gore – born 1948 in Washington, DC He is a well-known politician who served as a state senator and vice president of the United States and was a member of the House of Representatives. After reading the report by Leonard Kleinrock, one of the co-founders of ARPANET, Gore began drafting his High Performance Computing Act, which passed in 1991 and secured an allocation of $600 million for the development of Internet technologies.
Source: Wikipedia
Linus Torvalds – born 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. One of the most influential software developers to develop Linux operating systems. This is also the kernel for Chrome OS and Android. He also created Git and Subsurface. Torvalds is one of the biggest protagonists of the open source internet and open source software.
Source: Wikipedia
John Perry Barlow – born 1947 in Cora, Wyoming. Although he had no technical knowledge of computers or the Internet, he was instrumental in their development. He is a libertarian and worked at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He died in 2018.
Source: Wikipedia
Thomas Knoll – born 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This software developer is best known for developing Photoshop. He began developing various image processing techniques in 1988. He showed these core routines to his brother and together they worked on developing Photoshop for Adobe Systems.
Source: Wikipedia
John Knoll – born 1962 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Knoll is chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic and visual effects supervisor. In addition to creating Photoshop with his brother Thomas, he also worked on the special effects of the original Star Wars trilogy.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
First website launched – created by Tim Berners-Lee and published on August 6thTh1991. This website contained information about the entire World Wide Web, what the Web is, what possibilities it offers and what current uses it offers. The website was hosted on a computer called NeXT at CERN.
Source: Story
EuropaNet – the first network managed by a non-profit company DANTE. It had access ports from 64 kbit/s to 8 Mbit/s and initially used X.25 technology. It was a multi-protocol backbone network that provided gateways and intercontinental connections.
Source: Wikipedia
Pretty good privacy – Founded in 1991 by Phill Zimmermann. PGP is an encryption program for data communication authentication and cryptographic data protection. It is used for email security for encrypting and decrypting information, logging in and sharing files.
Source: Wikipedia
The Gore Law – also known as the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. The bill was introduced by Al Gore and passed by 102 votesnd United States Congress. This law secured funding for the National Research and Education Network and the development of the National Information Infrastructure in the United States.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
1 site – Since Tim Berners Lee created the first ever website in 1991, we have seen a drastic growth of websites around the world. In less than 30 years, people have created a total of 2 billion websites. However, only around 400 million websites are actually active.
Source: Hosting Tribunal
Internet users – In its early days, only a few people used networks and the Internet. Scientists and Internet pioneers used these networks. But since the WWW became public, the number of users worldwide began to grow exponentially. In 1995, only 0.4% of the world’s population used the Internet (16 million). In 2020, a total of 62% of the world’s population uses the Internet (4.8 billion).
Source: Internet World Statistics

1992

The Internet Society was founded by Robert Khan and Vint Cerf. At the same time, the number of Internet hosts grew to over a million.

source: Internet Hall of Fame

Tracy LaQuey’s “First Layman Guide to the Internet” has finally been published. It quickly became a success and was translated into eight different languages ​​around the world.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

Ermanno Pietrosemoli started his project to provide technical education via the Internet in many different countries in Africa and Latin America.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

The Internet was founded by Dr. Harusha Ishida introduced in Japan. He explains the full potential of online work and introduces the Japanese to UNIX computing.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

George Sadowsky launched an educational initiative to train people from over 100 countries around the world in Internet governance, management, operations and technologies. By the end of this initiative, more than 1,500 certified Internet teachers would begin sharing their knowledge of the Internet in their countries. This initiative contributed significantly to the global spread of the Internet.

Source: Eyerys

People
Ermanno Pietrosemoli – Date of birth unknown. Currently working as a researcher at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. Ermann has been spreading the Internet since its beginnings. He helped introduce low-cost technical solutions and wireless communications in countries such as the USA, Venezuela, Peru, Morocco, Mexico, Italy, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina and so on.
Source: IEEE.org
Haruhisa Ishida – born 1936 in Taiwan. Ishida studied at the University of Tokyo and knew how important the TCP/IP protocols were since the beginning of the Internet. He brought the Internet to Japan, worked on Internet security measures and protocols, and introduced UNIX computing to Japan. Ishida died in 2009.
Source: Internet Hall of Fame
George Sadowsky – born 1936 in Novocherkassk, USSR. He is one of the most successful global internet promoters. He worked to bring the Internet to developing countries by helping to legislate, making this technology more affordable, and helping create a plan to connect these countries.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
Internet Society – Internet Society is a non-profit organization. Since its founding in 1992, its goal has been to provide greater education and knowledge about Internet policies, access, education and technical standards. ISOC’s official motto is “The Internet is for everyone.” The organization had offices in Geneva, Switzerland and Reston, Virginia.
Source: Wikipedia
Layman’s Guide to the Internet – Although this book was first published in 1992, its last publication was in 2013. That’s how big this book was. It’s a guide that teaches people everything they need to know about computer technology and the Internet when using these things at home.
Source: Vector7
UNIX computing – UNIX technology is a group of operating systems with multiple users who perform multitasking. UNIX computing has its origins in AT&T UNIX and this technology was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at Bell Labs.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
992,000 hosts – The number of Internet hosts reached almost one million at the end of 1992. In 1993, this number was finally broken, marking a major milestone in the history of the Internet.
Source: Statista
10 sites – The total number of websites in the world in 1992 was 10. However, W3 technology became available to everyone in 1993, triggering the growth of the Internet.
Source: Statista

1993

The Mosaic Browser was released by the NCSA. The Mosaic Browser is created by Eric Bina and Marc Andreessen at NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications). This was the first commercially successful web browser, popularizing the World Wide Web and making it available to the public.

Source: Wikipedia

Nabil Bukhalid assembled a team of Internet experts who built Lebanon’s domain registry and brought the Internet to the country. The American University of Beirut team has been instrumental in the development of the Internet in this country.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

John Cioffi develops Digital Subscriber Line Technology (DSL). His Discrete Multitone version of DSL became an instant success and was adopted as a standard in the United States. For this reason, Cioffi was named the “Father of DSL.”

Source: ETHW

The first newspaper ever appears online – “The Tech”. These were campus newspapers at MIT, and this was the first complete newspaper server ever to store all published editions.

Source: Wikipedia

People
Marc Andreessen – born 1971 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This well-known software developer and entrepreneur is one of the developers of the web browser “Mosaic”. He also co-founded Netscape, Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware and Ning and is also on the board of Facebook.
Source: Wikipedia
Eric Bina – born 1964 in Champaign, Illinois. Together with Marc Andreessen, he was one of the co-founders of Netscape and Mosaic, the first commercially used web browser. He also worked for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Source: Wikipedia
Nabil Bukhalid – Date of birth unknown. An internet pioneer from Lebanon. He was instrumental in the development and management of the Internet networks throughout Lebanon. He created the first Lebanese hub and domain registry in the country. He also worked as a registrar and administrator for the Lebanese registry.
Source: World Economic Forum
John Cioffi – born 1956 in Champaign, Illinois. He is a well-known inventor and electrical engineer. Cioffi is the father of DSL, having created the first digital subscriber line. He made it applicable and practical. Cioffi also authored numerous publications on this technology and created various patents.
Source: Wikipedia
Technologies & Companies
Mosaic Browser – the first commercial web browser used by the public. It was crucial in popularizing the Internet because it contained graphics and text. It could support multiple internet protocols. Developed at NCSA in 1993, it was the first graphical browser.
Source: Wikipedia
DSL technology – Digital Subscriber Loop or Digital Subscriber Line includes many different technologies designed to support the transmission of data over telephone lines. The most commonly used type of DSL for Internet use is ADSL or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. The consumer level DSL bitrate is typically between 256 Kbit/s and 100 Mbit/s.
Source: Wikipedia
The tech-first web newspaper – one of the first online publishers ever. Tech started on the World Wide Web in 1993 and all editions published online are available on the website.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
1,776,000 hosts
26,000 domain names
150 sites

1994

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, who were graduate students in electrical engineering. The two founded the company in a small trailer and wanted to create a catalog of all the interesting sites.

This little idea took her company far when Microsoft launched a $44.6 billion takeover bid in 2008. The company was initially called “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” but was quickly renamed Yahoo.

Source: Wikipedia

China began working on its own internet backbone. More specifically, Jianping Wu was the leader of the project and the lead developer of CERNET. In just a short time, CERNET developed into the largest Chinese network. Initially it was an academic network, but later it was also used for the Internet.

Source: Xinhuanet

At the same time, Qihen Hu brought the Chinese delegation to the National Science Foundation in the United States to discuss the connection between the two countries. As a result of these discussions, the first TCP/IP connection was established in China.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

The very first Request For Comments release was published by Erik Huizer. It introduced the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), its working groups and standard processes.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

Marc Andreessen challenged his company to find a way to secure all sensitive data transmitted online. The answer was a security encryption called Secure Socket Layer or SSL. This security encryption is still an Internet standard.

Source: Eyerys

The first webcam was developed in the same year. It was named “Connectix QuickCam” and cost around $99. Some of the first models could only capture images in gray at a resolution of 320 x 240 and could only be used on Mac computers.

However, this didn’t stop inventive computer scientists from using this webcam with the CU-SeeMe conferencing software and the Internet to video chat online.

Source: PopularMechanics.com

In the same year, Marc Andreessen also founded the company Netscape. The company immediately began work on a web browser of the same name. Many credit Netscape for starting the .Com revolution with its easy-to-use browser.

Netscape also contributed significantly to the popularity of the Internet because many people did not understand what it was about.

Source: PopularMechanics.com

People
David Filo – born 1966 in Wisconsin, USA. A well-known computer technology entrepreneur who co-founded Yahoo. He created the Filo server program, which dynamically displayed various web pages.
Source: Wikipedia
Jerry Yang – born 1968 in Taipei, Taiwan. He is a computer programmer, entrepreneur and investor. He is a co-founder of AME Cloud Ventures and Yahoo and was a major shareholder in Alibaba. Yang was also CEO of Yahoo until 2007.
Source: Wikipedia
Jianping Wu – born 1953 in Taiyuan, China. This professor and computer scientist was instrumental in the development of the China Education and Research Network, also known as CERNET. He served as director and technical board member of CERNET and was also vice president of the China Internet Association.
Source: Wikipedia
Erik Huizer – Date of birth unknown. A distinguished member of ICANN with contributions to the Internet, digital technologies, media and ICT. He was also CTO of SURFnet and a professor at Utrecht University. Huizer also wrote the first publication requesting comment.
Source: Wikipedia
Marc Andreessen – born 1971 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This well-known software developer and entrepreneur is one of the developers of the Mosaic web browser. He also co-founded Netscape, Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware and Ning and is also on the board of Facebook.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
Yahoo! – an Internet web services company founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang. The company’s headquarters are in Sunnyvale, California. Although Yahoo! is nowhere near its former glory, it was a pioneering internet company back then. The company’s core services included the search engine and web portal, as well as sports betting, social media, email services, advertising services, messaging and a news portal.
Source: Wikipedia
IETF – The Internet Engineering Task Force is a non-profit standards organization. The goal is to create and adopt various Internet standards, with a focus on standards that could complement TCP/IP technology. Anyone can become a member if they have the necessary knowledge to get involved. It was founded in 1986.
Source: Wikipedia
SSL – The first Secure Sockets Layer was developed by Netscape in 1994. However, version 1.0 had many flaws and was never released. SSL encryption features a cryptographic system that encrypts data using a public key and a private key. SSL is the predecessor of TLS, a better version based on the same principles.
Source: Webopedia
First webcam – Developed in 1994 by the company Connectix. Although it was not initially used as a webcam, the development of the World Wide Web and video conferencing software made it ideal for this use. QuickCam was completely black and white and could handle a maximum of 15 images. It was used on Apple Macintosh devices of the time.
Source: Wikipedia
Netscape – a computer services company founded in 1994 by Marc Andreessen and James H. Clark. The company developed the first commercial web browser “Netscape”, SSL encryption technology and JavaScript, and founded a sister company called Mozilla Organization before being acquired by AOL.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
3,212,000 hosts
46,000 domain names
3000 websites

1995

Together with his team, Karlheinz Brandenburg created a file extension for the MP3 audio format.

The Internet was commercialized when Amazon came online in 1995, a year after its founding. Many people believe that Amazon is the most successful story of the early commercial Internet because it was one of the few companies of the time to survive the “dot-com bubble.”

The company had to lay off most of its employees and lost around $1.4 billion in just 12 months. Despite all this, Jeff Bezos (founder) managed to restructure Amazon and turn it into one of the leading e-commerce giants.

Source: Cnet

This is the same year eBay was founded. However, initially it was called AuctionWeb. It was created by Pierre Omidyar, whose goal was to create an online marketplace that would provide equal opportunities for everyone. The website is based on trust between users and values ​​honesty and fair trade.

Source: Cnet

LiveScript is first launched with Netscape Navigator 2.0. This may not seem like an important moment, but LiveScript is the precursor to JavaScript. In December 1995, Brendan Eich renamed it JavaScript after working with Sun Microsystems. Interactivity on the web was only possible with the introduction of JavaScript.

Source: Cnet

Apache servers were released for the first time. In a short time, these servers will become standard on the Internet and everyone will use them. To date, around half of online sites run on Apache servers. These servers were completely free, open source solutions developed by Rob McCool. The Apache servers were essential to the growth of the web in the 90s and early 2000s.

Source: Britannica

1995 was also the year in which the first internet radio was created. Norman Hajjar founded Radio HK, a 100% internet radio station that “streamed” music from various bands that were not yet signed to a record label. This radio station was able to reach over 100,000 people in many different countries around the world. It also had the ASCAP trial license and was a groundbreaking internet radio that opened the door for many others.

Source: Cnet

People
Karlheinz Brandenburg – born 1954 in Erlangen, Germany. The mathematician and engineer developed the MP3 format together with Harald Popp, Bernhard Grill, Ernst Eberlein and other employees. He also contributed to psychoacoustics, audio coding and perceptual measurements.
Source: Wikipedia
Jeff Bezos – born 1964 in Albuquerque, USA. He is a well-known businessman, investor and billionaire. Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, which is what he is best known for. He was also president and CEO of this e-commerce giant. Bezos has been considered the richest man in the world since 2017.
Source: Wikipedia
Pierre Omidyar – born 1967 in Paris, France. Omidyar studied at Berkeley, where he received his engineering degree. Well-known philanthropist and entrepreneur Omidyar founded eBay in 1994 and served as chairman until 2015. He also founded the “Omidyar Network” to expand his philanthropic work and worked as an online journalist in 2010.
Source: Wikipedia
Brendan Oak – born 1961 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Eich is best known as the inventor of the JavaScript language and as one of the co-founders of the Mozilla Corporation. He also worked as CEO and CTO of Mozilla Corporation. He also founded the company Brave Software, of which he is the CEO.
Source: Wikipedia
Rob McCool – born in 1973 in the United States. Robert Martin McCool was the author of the first NCSA HTTPd server, popularly called Apache Server. He created this server software while working on the Mosaic team founded by NCSA. McCool also worked for Netscape, Yahoo!, Google, Stanford University and so on.
Source: Wikipedia
Norman Hajjar – Date of birth unknown. He was an electrical engineer and broadcast radio stations over the Internet. With his company Hajjar/Kaufman New Media Lab, he successfully broadcast a fully Internet-based radio signal in 1995.
Source: Wikiwand

Technologies
MP3 – This digital audio encoding format or file extension was created by Karlheinz Brandenburg and some of his employees. There were several versions before a standard version was created. It is also a compression standard that loses some of its audio quality, but not significantly. This makes files much easier to manage while retaining most of their quality.
Source: Wikipedia
Amazon – The company was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos. The headquarters is in Seattle, Washington. Amazon’s core services include e-commerce, cloud services, AI development and online streaming. It is one of the largest information technology companies in the world, alongside Facebook, Apple and Google.
Source: Wikipedia
eBay – Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. It was set up as an auction site where people could interact individually. The first item sold on the platform was a broken laser pointer. The company exploded and was renamed eBay in 1997. It quickly grew into one of the largest auction-based websites in the world, earning billions.
Source: Wikipedia
JavaScript – a programming language that uses the ECMAScript specification. JS is a multi-paradigm, out-of-the-box, high-level language. It is one of the most important technologies on the WWW as it enables the use of various web apps and interactive websites. Brendan Eich played a key role in the development of JavaScript.
Source: Wikipedia
Apache – Apache HTTP Server is an open source and completely free cross-platform web server software. It was originally created in 1995 by Robert McCool. However, it has been further updated and maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Most Apache HTTP servers run on Linux, but there are also Windows and Unix-like versions.
Source: Wikipedia
Radio HK – founded in February 1995, it was the first internet-based radio station ever. A virtually created audio CD was used, which was looped together with the web conferencing software CU-SeeMe.
Source: Guinness World Records

Important statistics
62,803 hosts
120,000 domain names
25,000 websites
16 million internet users

Source: Netcraft

1996

Basic Voice over the Internet protocols were developed by Dr. Henning Schulzrinne developed. These protocols enable VoIP.

VocalTec developed the “Internet Phone”. It was the first commercially available VoIP software that could be used on personal computers. This was almost a decade before Skype came out. Even though dial-up modems were used back then, the Internet Phone could handle packet loss and slow Internet. It showed the potential of VoIP technology and how it could be used in the future.

Source: Cnet

In 1995, Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia began working on Hotmail, the first web-based email service. It launched a year later and was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for $400 million. This was an important event for Internet communications because it showed that email could be used outside of Internet service providers. Simply put, anyone on the Internet could use email, no matter where they were.

Source: Cnet

A computer drawing software called SmartSketch was developed in 1995 by a company called FutureSplash. The company was acquired by Macromedia and renamed the software FutureSplash Animator. It was later renamed Macromedia Flash 1.0. The company distributed its plugin for free so anyone could use its software. Soon over 90% of Internet users had Flash Player.

Source: Wikipedia

The ICQ chat platform was created. It was developed in 1996 by an Israeli company called Mirabilis. It was one of the first standalone clients to enable instant messaging. While it wasn’t the first real-time chat platform, it was the first to offer a central service across different user accounts. ICQ was acquired by AOL in 1998.

Source: Wikipedia

The Internet Archive was created by Brewster Kahle after the successful creation of the Wide Area Information Servers System. He wanted to archive audio files, videos, images, text and websites on the Internet. That’s why he invented the Internet Archive, which was free to use.

Source: Cnet

People
Henning Schulzrinne – born in Cologne, Germany (date of birth unknown). An Internet multimedia expert and computer scientist. He is best known for developing Internet standards. Together with Mark Handley he developed the Session Initiation Protocol, the Real-time Transport Protocol, the Real-time Streaming Protocol and the Next Steps in Signaling Protocol.
Source: Wikipedia
Brewster Kahle – born 1960 in New York City, New York. This Internet activist, entrepreneur and computer engineer is a digital librarian and promoter of the Internet. He founded the Alexa Internet and the Internet Archive. He also founded WAIS Inc. along with the WAIS System, a document retrieval system, a precursor to search engines.
Source: Wikipedia
Saber Bhatia – born 1968 in Chandigarh, India. This Indian-American engineer developed Hotmail with Jack Smith in 1996 in response to an ISP email. Bhatia was also CEO of Hotmail until it was acquired by Microsoft. He also founded JaxtrSMS, a free messaging service, and e-commerce company Arzoo Inc.
Source: Wikipedia
Jack Smith – born in 1968 in the United States. He founded Hotmail in 1996 with Sabeer Bhatia. He worked for Apple Inc, founded EEE.com, co-founded Akamba Corporation and is currently CEO of Proximex.
Source: Wikipedia
Jonathan Gay – born in 1967 in the United States. A software entrepreneur and programmer who founded Future Wave Software Company. He is one of the main people responsible for the development of Flash. He also founded the company Software as Art, which developed solutions for the efficient use of energy.
Source: Wikipedia
Norman Hajjar – Date of birth unknown. He was an electrical engineer and broadcast a radio station over the Internet. With his company Hajjar/Kaufman New Media Lab, he successfully broadcast a fully Internet-based radio signal in 1995.
Source: Wikiwand

Technologies & Companies
VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol encompasses a range of technologies and methods that enable multimedia transmissions and voice communications over the Internet. The information sent over this protocol is packetized and sent over a packet-switched network.
Source: Wikipedia
VocalTec internet telephone – The Internet Phone is the first VoIP software to be used on the Internet. It was created by Lior Haramty and Alon Cohen. The phone worked with the audio transceiver, which managed sample rate adjustment, packet reordering and packet loss.
Source: Wikipedia
Internet Archive – an online digital library created with the aim of providing free access to universal knowledge. It includes tons of data from books, movies, images, videos, games, software, etc. It is an open and free internet archive available to everyone. It was founded in 1996.
Source: Wikipedia
Hotmail – the first web-based email service that is completely independent of Internet service providers. Hotmail was developed in 1996 by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia. Anyone could access their email inbox, no matter where they were. It offered 2MB of storage and reached 8.5 million subscribers in 1997 when it was sold to Microsoft.
Source: Wikipedia
flash – a multimedia software application for viewing and creating visual media such as games, mobile and desktop apps, animations, etc. Flash is currently owned by Adobe and has been updated many times throughout its history. Its origins date back to 1996, when the first version was released by the company FutureWave.
Source: Wikipedia
ICQ – the first widely used instant messaging platform to offer a centralized service. Users had to create their accounts and start conversations with each other. This VoIP client messenger was developed in 1996 by the Mirabilis company. In 2001, ICQ peaked with over 100 million registered accounts.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
603,367 hosts
488,000 domain names
300,000 websites
36 million internet users

1997

The term “Weblog” was invented by Jörn Barger. He came up with this term while logging data on his website. He was one of the pioneers of blogging and is still a blogger today. However, the term “blog” came about a little later, in 1999, when he wanted to shorten the term “weblog”.

Source: Peterme.com And Cnet

SixDegrees.com was launched. It was the first social networking site to allow people to create accounts, customize profiles, and connect with other people using their email address.

Dave Winer developed the scriptingNews format, a precursor to RSS feeds. RSS allows people to subscribe to a website in a standardized way and receive readable content. Based on XML language, this format helps people get information from different websites in the same channel. Ramanathan V. Guha and Dan Libby of Netscape further developed this XML-based technology and created RSS 0.90 in 1999. RSS feeds made blogs much more accessible and enabled podcasting as a concept.

Source: Tutorials point

WiFi was introduced to the world. It was made publicly available to everyone and this event led to the formation of the 802.11 Committee, which was renamed IEEE802.11. The name was inspired by a set of standards that define wireless local area network communications.

Source: PopularMechanics.com

Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded Netflix Inc. in Scotts Valley, California. The company originally sold and rented DVDs by mail, but quickly transitioned to pure rentals and remained its primary business model until 2007, when it launched a streaming platform.

Source: Wikipedia

People
Jörn Barger – born 1953 in Yellow Springs, Ohio. One of the blogging pioneers who had an influential website called Robot Wisdom. He invented the term “weblog,” which later evolved into “blog.” He has published widely on various topics, including AI and James Joyce.
Source: Wikipedia
Dan Libby – Date of birth unknown. A software engineer who contributed to the development of RSS fees while working at Netscape. He also helped port Netscape to the OS/2 platform. He currently works at Open Source Consulting as a software developer.
Source: Wikipedia
Ramanathan V. Guha – born 1965 in Tiruchirappalli, India. He contributed to computer technology by creating various interest standards such as Scheme.org, RDF and RSS. Guha also developed Google Custom Search and is co-founder of Alipiri and Epinions.
Source: Wikipedia
Reed Hastings – born 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts. An American entrepreneur and businessman. He co-founded Netflix and is currently the company’s chairman. Hastings also serves on the boards of many nonprofit organizations.
Source: Wikipedia
Marc Randolph – born 1958 in Chappaqua, New York. One of the co-founders of Netflix and former CEO. A successful consultant and businessman who co-founded Macworld Magazine and MicroWarehouse. He is a board member at Chubbies Shorts and Looker Data Sciences.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
Weblog – A weblog is a term used to describe a blog. It was invented by Jörn Barger in 1997. These informal websites usually consist of news or diary-like posts filled with text information. These media sparked many discussions on various topics on the Internet. Nowadays, there are different types of blog niches that focus on different topics.
Source: Wikipedia
Six degrees – the first ever social networking website. Although there was no term for this type of site at the time, SixDegrees offered all aspects of social networking, including creating a profile, customizing, adding friends, posting to bulletin boards, and chatting with others.
Source: Wikipedia
RSS – a web feed that allows Internet users to access various content on a website in a readable and standardized format. Websites use RSS feeds for different reasons. However, in most cases, the goal is to spread information about important updates such as news, new episodes, new blog posts, etc. RSS was developed by Netscape in 1999.
Source: Wikipedia
WiFi – a group of network protocols designed for wireless Internet. Designed to IEEE 802.11 standards for Wi-Fi internet and devices. The term Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi works with Ethernet and allows devices compatible with its protocols to connect through various access points without a physical connection.
Source: Wikipedia
Netflix – one of the largest streaming companies in the world. Netflix was founded in Scotts Valley, California in 1997 by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. The initial business model was selling and renting DVDs. However, starting in 2007, the company established itself as an inline streaming platform that people could access through a subscription. Netflix then began producing and distributing television series and films.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
1,681,868 hosts
1,301,000 domain names
1,200,000 websites
70 million internet users

1998

Two Ph.D. Students Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded a company called Google in September. Google was founded by the two students as a private company.

Source: Wikipedia

The first blogs were published. The social blogging network Open Diary was launched. For the first time, readers had the opportunity to comment on someone else’s blog. At the same time, the network gave bloggers the opportunity to share their content only with their friends. All of these publishing tools on Open Diary inspired a number of new blogging platforms.

Source: Wikipedia

The Mail Abuse Prevention System Company was founded by Paul Vixie. The goal of this organization was to combat spam messages and other abusive behavior via email.

Source: Wikipedia

PayPal was founded in Paolo Alto, California. Back then, no one knew how big this money transfer platform would become and many people were skeptical about online transfers.

Source: Electronic Payments International

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers got its first CEO and president – ​​Michael Roberts.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

The multilingual Internet domain name system was founded by Tan Tin Wee. He was key to putting it on the international map – in the 1990s he led a group of people who hosted Tamil and Chinese websites in Singapore. He has received numerous awards for his technological achievements in the development of the Tamil Internet.

Source: Internet Hall of Fame

People
Larry Page – born 1973 in Lansing, Michigan. A successful internet entrepreneur and software developer. He was one of the founders of Google and worked as Google’s CEO until 2001. He also developed a search algorithm used by Google, “PageRank,” and was CEO of Alphabet.
Source: Wikipedia
Sergey Brin – born 1973 in Moscow, Russia. Together with Larry Page, he co-founded Google and Alphabet Inc. They also co-developed PageRank and achieved great success together. In 2020, Brin was the 20thTh richest person in the world.
Source: Wikipedia
Paul Vixie – born in 1963 in the United States. This computer scientist contributed to the development of the Domain Name System, its procedures, designs, mechanisms and implementations. He also achieved important successes in the area of ​​open source software. Vixie was behind the first anti-spam service provider.
Source: Wikipedia
Michael Roberts – Date of birth unknown. An expert and consultant in Internet technology. He was CEO and President of ICANN. He is currently Chairman of the US UCAN and President of Darwin Group, Inc.
Source: ICANNWiki

Technologies & Companies
Google – a multinational computer technology company that provides various Internet products and services. The company’s core offerings include hardware, software, cloud services, search engines, advertising, etc. It was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The company is one of the leading providers in the development of information technology.
Source: Wikipedia
PayPal – an American-based online payment systems company. The company provides online money transfer infrastructure and acts as a payment processor for commercial users, auction sites and vendors. PayPal was founded in 1998 by Luke Nosek, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. The company was originally called Confinity.
Source: Wikipedia
Open diary – one of the first social networking/blogging platforms. It was created in 1998 by Bruce Ableson. It was the first example of websites being used as online diaries. The peak number of diaries on this platform was over 600,000. Its architecture inspired the creation of various blogging platforms and social networks.
Source: Wikipedia
Email abuse prevention system – one of the first commercial anti-spam service companies. The company achieved this by creating a Domain Name System Blacklist. The company had five lists based on which IP addresses and emails were blocked. The name MAPS was given by founder Pau Vixie and means “spam” backwards.
Source: Wikipedia
ICANN – the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers. A non-profit organization that maintains various databases that control the numeric and name space of the Internet. The organization’s goal is to ensure that the entire network functions securely and stably.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
3,689,227 hosts
4,300,000 domain names
2,410,067 sites
147 million internet users

1999

Winifred Mitchell Baker has joined the Mozilla project. She also founded the Mozilla Foundation and became its chair. Their work gave legitimacy to open source Internet software clients.

Source: Wikipedia

Craigslist was founded by Craig Newmark. Craigslist quickly became one of the most popular websites in the world. It introduced classified ads to the Internet and revolutionized it. With the influence of Craigslist, classifieds has become an Internet industry.

Source: Wikipedia

The .SE board recognized the value of Domain Name System Security Extensions, or DNSSEC. This Internet protocol protection provides visitors with greater security and shows them whether they are visiting a secure website. The application of DNSSEC is largely due to the efforts of Anne-Marie Eklund Lowinder.

Source: Wikipedia

Pyra Labs creates and launches their “Blogger” platform. Anyone on the Internet could now create their own personal blog quickly and for free on this platform. Blogger was a huge success for the blogging community and developed rapidly. For this reason, Google acquired the company in 2003.

Source: Wikipedia

One of the world’s first popular messaging, voice calling and video calling services was launched – Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger.

Source: Wikipedia

The first major internet-based music platform was launched – Napster. In just a month, Napster began distributing MP3 data to its users. The application was created by Sean Fanning and was a major milestone that showed how the Internet could change the entire music industry in the future.

Source: Wikipedia

The BlackBerry “850” was presented for the first time in Munich. This two-way email pager was named by marketing firm Lexicon Branding. The company soon traded under the name BlackBerry Limited and was heavily involved in the development of smartphones and the entire mobile communications industry.

Source: Wikipedia

People
Mitchell Baker – born 1959 in Berkeley, California. She is Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Foundation and Executive Chairman of Mozilla Corporation. She worked for Netscape Communications Corporation and the Open Source Applications Foundation. She made major contributions to intellectual property protection and legal issues related to Internet services and product development.
Source: Wikipedia
Craig Newmark – born 1952 in New Jersey, USA. He is best known for creating the popular website Craigslist. This entrepreneur, philanthropist, and computer programmer has made numerous donations to humanitarian organizations and worked as a consultant for nonprofit organizations.
Source: Wikipedia
Anne-Marie Eklund Löwinder – born 1957 in Stockholm, Sweden. A proud member of the Internet Hall of Fame, board member of several Internet organizations and representative of ICANN. Anne-Marrie is one of the few people who controls key generation for the DNSSEC Internet Protocol.
Source: Wikipedia
Shawn Fanning – born 1980 in Brockton, Massachusetts. This investor, entrepreneur and programmer is best known for developing Napster. This was the first peer-to-peer platform where people shared music. However, after numerous copyright lawsuits, he sold the company. He also founded the companies Rupture, Path, Airtime and Snocap.
Source: Wikipedia

Technologies & Companies
Mozilla project – The project began in 1998 when the Netscape browser code was released to the public. The goal of the project was to pool the knowledge of many programmers to drive innovation and perfect the browser market so that the whole world can benefit.
Source: Mozilla
Craigslist – the first classifieds website with many categories. Founded in 1999 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist offered listings for forums, music shows, various services, articles, housing listings, jobs, and much more. Craigslist is used in over 70 countries with more than 55 million monthly users.
Source: Wikipedia
DNSSEC – Domain Name Security Extensions are a set of IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) specifications used to secure information from the DNS. These extensions provide DNS clients with data integrity, authentication, and denial of existence authentication.
Source: Wikipedia
Bloggers – a publishing platform launched in 1999. It allows users to create blogs and share them with multiple people. Created by Pyra Labs and acquired by Google in 2003. Blogs can use the site’s subdomain or get a third-party custom domain. A single user can have up to 100 blogs.
Source: Wikipedia
MSN Messenger – Windows Live Messenger or MSN was a messaging platform developed by Microsoft in 1999. It was a cross-platform messaging platform that worked with Facebook Messenger and Yahoo! was compatible. Messenger. At one point it had 330 million users, but the final release was in 2012.
Source: Wikipedia
Napster – one of the first peer-to-peer platforms. It allowed sharing audio files and songs in MP3 format. Due to copyright issues, it quickly became an online music store. It was created by Shawn Fanning in 1999 and sold to Rhapsody.
Source: Wikipedia

statistics
9,544,483 hosts
7,052,350 domain names
3,177,453 sites
248 million internet users

To be continued

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