History of the Internet

While only a recent phenomenum, the internet has been lurking around since the 1960s.

1960s: Advent of packet-switching network heralds birth of Internet

Packet switching breaks data into chunks, or “packets,” and lets each one take its own path to a destination, where they are re-assembled (rather than sending everything along the same path, as a traditional telephone circuit does).

1969: US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) furthers packet-switching development

In 1969, Bolt, Beranek & Newman developed the “interface message processors” (I.M.P.’s), otherwise known as “nodes” or “packet switches”—the crucial hardware for sending and receiving bursts of data. Given the task by ARPA, the BBN team delivered their prototype on an 8 month deadline

1970s: ARPA introduces network for defence and develops e-mail. US universities join network

1973: First intercontinental network connection as University College of London joins network

As networking grew, so did the number of distinct networks. In France an Aparnet called Cyclades was being built. A satellite network (Satnet) was developed. Foreseeing the chaos of multiple networks that could not communicate, Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf designed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), in 1973.

1975: Bill Gates creates Microsoft as PC sales grow

1978: First SPAM messages

The arrival of e-mail was followed quickly by the arrival of “junk” e-mail, or spam. Gary Thuerk from Digital Equipment Corporation, sent the first spam into the Arpanet in 1978—it was an open invitation to two product demonstrations in California. (The Ferris Research technology group estimates that the global cost of combating unwanted e-mails will reach $140 billion in 2008.)

1979: USENET is developed, the parent of the internet

In the decade after TCP was introduced, the Internet was embraced by university researchers and other early adopters. The roots of Web culture can be traced to the USENET and bulletin boards that evolved in this era.

1985: Forerunner of America Online (AOL) is launched by Steve Case

In 1985, a company called Control Video hired Steve Case, a product manager at Pizza Hut, to help market its fledgling electronic-gaming service. In a few years Case became its chief executive and pushed the company further into interactivity and communications. The company was ultimately re-christened America Online, and the catchphrase “You’ve got mail” became a salutation for a generation of computer users.

1988: First Internet Attack

When the Internet started to become a truly globalized system, the potential threats to it became greater..interconnectivity is both a strength and a weakness. The first significant attack came on November 2, 1988, in the form of the so-called Morris Worm, created by a Cornell graduate student named Robert Morris.
Robert Morris found a security hole in Unix systems and decided to write a worm. He’s a student and not being malicious but unfortunately he made a pretty major programming error. Instead of doing what he intended, which was to wander around the Net and have a good time, it just shut down all the network systems.
Morris became the first person indicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He was eventually fined more than $10,000 and sentenced to three years’ probation and 400 hours of community service. Morris himself is now a professor of computer science at M.I.T.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee develops INTERNET COMPUTER LANGUAGE and address system

1991: WorldWideWeb browser and server software made available by Tim Berners-Lee

In 1991, CERN, one of the world’s largest physics laboratories, based in Geneva, introduced the World Wide Web, a vast document-linking structure developed by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee and his Belgian colleague Robert Cailliau. This robust new global-information resource made possible the emergence of “browsers”—software used to navigate the Web and maneuver through text and images on-screen.

1993: Mosaic, the first properly developed web-browser, takes Internet by storm

The first browser to take off was Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen, a student at the University of Illinois. Entrepreneur Jim Clark soon took notice and partnered with Andreessen to create Netscape Communications.

1995: Browser Wars

By 1995 the Netscape Navigator browser dominated the market. On December 7, 1995, Microsoft C.E.O. Bill Gates gave a speech to his employees outlining Microsoft’s aggressive new approach to the Internet. He named Netscape as a target and rallied a team of top-notch programmers to build Internet Explorer. The event is known in the industry as Pearl Harbor Day
For two and a half years Internet Explorer ate away at Netscape’s lead. The Browser Wars reached a pivotal moment when Microsoft offered Internet Explorer as a free feature in Windows.
In 2000, U.S. District Court judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft had illegally held a monopoly on Windows and used it as a platform to crush competitors such as Netscape. He ordered that Microsoft be broken into two companies. In 2001 a federal appeals court upheld his ruling, but reversed the order to split up the company. Later that year Microsoft reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which permitted the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows on the condition that users could choose other browsers as well.

1995: Amazon launched by Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey P. Bezos created the online bookstore Amazon.com in 1995. Based in Seattle, it is currently the world’s largest online retailer.

1995: eBay basis set by Pierre Omidyar

The Internet auction site eBay was created in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, and it now has some 276 million registered users in 39 countries. (Not everything can be bought on eBay; restrictions cover many items, including lottery tickets, locksmithing tools, and human body parts.)

1994: Yahoo launched by David Filo and Jerry Yang

In 1994, Stanford classmates Jerry Yang and David Filo launched Yahoo, an early Web portal and search engine. It remains one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

1998: Google is born

In 1998, two Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, unveiled their prototype of an Internet search engine that they believed outperformed anything else available at the time. They gave it the quirky name Google (from the mathematical term “googol,” or 10 to the 100th power). Today, Google dominates the search-engine business.

1998: ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is born

2000: Dot com boom and bust

The dot-com boom of the 1990s was epitomized by the initial public offering of Netscape Communications, in August 1995; on the opening day of trading, Netscape’s stock price almost doubled in value. Before long, Silicon Valley was the scene of the most frenzied investing in modern times. Some companies, such as Amazon.com and eBay, had realistic business models; many other start-ups did not. Record losses soon followed. Between March 10, 2000, and October 10, 2002, the nasdaq Composite Index, which lists most technology and Internet companies, lost 78 percent of its value.

2002: Social Networking

In 2002, former Netscape engineer Jonathan Abrams created a new movement in Internet activity with his “social networking” site Friendster. While Friendster emerged as a darling of Silicon Valley, it was eventually overtaken in the U.S. by the hipper MySpace, founded by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. Another rival emerged with the cleaner, college-student-friendly Facebook, founded in a Harvard dorm in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Abrams is the founder and current C.E.O. of Socializr.

2005: YouTube arrives

Chad Hurley started YouTube in 2005 with his PayPal colleague the engineer Steve Chen. It was one of the first media sites entirely driven by user-generated content. In 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000. (User-generated adult sites have quickly risen in popularity as well. YouPorn—unaffiliated with YouTube—gets more traffic than CNN.com. Overall, the online porn business generates some $2.8 billion annually.)