10 Milestones in Internet History

 “We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain” – Stephen Hawking

For most of us today, living without the internet is almost unthinkable – just remember the day your connection died and how you felt. Probably something like this:

44 years ago, this very month, the first ever email was sent, via ARPANET, the first ever network to implement TCP/IP protocols. Of course, the internet has come a long way since then, and today, you can pay your bills, shop, order food and book tickets – all without leaving your chair! So let’s take a little trip down memory lane and have a look at the major milestones in internet history.

10 Milestones in Internet History

1.    1971 – The first ever email was sent, marking the beginning of the end of the postal/telegram service! The email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself and contained some insignificant message; no, it wasn’t “Hello World”!

2.    1989 – The World Wide Web was invented and all our websites began with the triple w. Alternative names that were considered include ‘The Information Mesh’ and ‘The Mine of Information’. The World Wide Web does sound a lot better, doesn’t it?

3.    1991 – The inventor of the WWW, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, puts up the first ever website – a move that has resulted in a billion websites, and still counting! You can visit the first website here: http://info.cern.ch/.

4.    1993 – For most of us, Google is the ultimate answer to all our questions. But the first search engine was W3Catalog, started in 1993. This worked in a way entirely different to later search engines, and was retired 3 years later.

5.    1994 – Online shopping rears its head with the first ever online purchase to be made on the website Net Market. By this time, the internet was available on the public domain, and Michael Aldrich pioneered the first secure online transaction.

6.    1995 – The ability to buy online triggers a sudden rise in online stores, and current sharks Amazon and eBay set up shop. Other offline enterprises like Pizza Hut also make their presence online.

7.    1996 – Mobile phones are becoming popular, but the first access to mobile internet occurred in 1996 in Finland, connecting a Nokia 9000 Communicator phone to the Sonera and Radiolinja networks.

8.    1996 – It doesn’t take long for cute or embarrassing videos to go viral these days, but the first ever viral video is The Dancing Baby, which has got up to 3,042,446 views till date.

9.    1997 – Google.com is registered as a domain and becomes the world’s biggest problem solver! Started by two Stanford students, Google fast displaces all other search engines to become the number one.

10. 2002 – The world’s first social network opens its doors to friends all over the world. No it wasn’t Facebook, but something similar, called Friendster. However, Friendster was affected by the rise of Facebook and it was relaunched in 2011 as a social gaming site.

Today, most of us take the internet for granted and many consider it a basic human right! The internet is something that has grown remarkably in such a short while and continues to develop further. And we sure are looking forward to more!