Between 1993 and 1995, the World Wide Web (www, or the Web), a
user-friendly information-sharing network system, quietly came into
being and began to spread. In its first fifteen years, the Web reshaped
U.S. communications, businesses, and politics, fueled worldwide economic growth, and became a central feature in the daily lives of more
than a billion people.
The Internet age began in the 1960s, when computer specialists in
Europe began to exchange information from a main computer to a remote
terminal by breaking down data into small packets of information that
could be reassembled at the receiving end. The system was called packetswitching. In 1968, the U.S. Department of Defense engaged scientists to
create a national communications system. Experimenting with packetswitching, the government scientists eventually linked several computers
over telephone lines to operate as a single system.
The system was called the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).
By 1983, research scientists extended the
use of ARPANET to form the early Internet, a
large network connecting the internal systems of
some universities and laboratories. Users were
able to exchange electronic mail (now known as
e-mail) and data, access computers at other locations, and communicate through newsgroups
(one-topic discussion groups) and bulletin
boards (message-posting sites). These exchanges
demanded advanced computer skills, and the
Internet remained a mystery to those without
training.
Berners-Lee invents the Web
In 1989, English scientist Tim Berners-Lee
(1955–) began work on a system he would eventually call the World Wide Web. His goal was to
make the Internet accessible to everyone.
Berners-Lee designed a standard set of protocols, rules that create an exact format, or pattern of arrangement, for communication between systems. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) became
the standard communications language on the Web. (Hypertext is any
text that can link to documents in other locations. Photos and other images, sounds, and video with links are called hypermedia.)
The next crucial step in the creation of the Web was to establish a
server—the computer program that stores information and delivers it in
the form of Web pages from one computer to another. The first Web
server in the United States, developed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center in Palo Alto, California, went live at the end of 1991. Finally, to
read the Web, users needed browser software, a program used to view
and interact with various types of Internet resources. Berners-Lee developed a text-based Web browser in 1992. With the protocols, server, and
Web browser in place, the World Wide Web was available to the public.
The Web improves and spreads
Improvements to the Web made it increasingly simple to use. In 1993,
Mosaic, a browser that adapted the graphics, familiar icons (picture symbols), and point-and-click methods, became available. Mosaic caught on
immediately—two million users downloaded it within a year. A year later, one of Mosaic’s creators devised Netscape Navigator, a highly successful Web browser that gave users more comfortable Web access. In
1995, Microsoft entered the competition with its Internet Explorer.
Simplicity of use immediately brought users to the Web. Internet
service providers such as CompuServe, America Online (AOL), Netcom,
and Prodigy arose rapidly to meet the enormous demand for servers to
link people to the Internet.
Most people working on personal computers (PCs) at home used
dial-up connections, which were slow and tied up their phone lines. The
first broadband options (meaning “broad bandwidth,” a high-capacity,
two-way link between an end user and access network suppliers that provided greater speed than telephone connections) appeared in 1997, but
it was not until the early 2000s that millions of homes and offices connected through broadband to the Web on a twenty-four-hour-a-day
basis.
The economic boom
During the late 1990s, the United States began to experience an economic boom (upswing) largely due to the success of Web-related companies, which came to be known as dot-coms. Because of the excitement
of investors in the new industry, stock prices of the dot-coms soared.
(Stock is the value of a company divided into individual shares. When a
company goes public, the public can purchase shares.) This caused even
more investors to jump in.
In 1995, Netscape offered its stock in a public stock offering. The
stock price soared to fantastically high levels, making the company’s
young founders instant millionaires. Other Web-related industry stocks
skyrocketed as well. AOL bought CompuServe in 1998 and Netscape
the following year, generating tremendous proceeds each time. In 1997,
Yahoo! Inc. was nothing more than a Web search index. By 1999, so
many advertisers and investors had jumped on the Yahoo! bandwagon, it
had become a major media company worth tens of billions of dollars.
The stock of online auction house eBay, one of a growing number of ecommerce companies, increased 2,000 percent in value in less than a
year when it went public in 1998. Amazon.com, a seller of books and
other merchandise online, was valued in the multibillions long before it made its first annual profit in 2004.
The dot-com bubble bursts
Many dot-com companies were founded by young, innovative people
who became suddenly rich when their companies’ stock prices rose. Their
employees were typically recent college graduates, lured by high salaries,
fun work environments, and the promise of owning shares in ever-soaring company stocks. Dot-coms did not stick to traditional business practices. They frequently offered their services to potential customers for free,
hoping to grab a corner of the future market. Profit was not a priority in
the short term; in fact, many dot-coms never made a dime.
In 2000, the enthusiasm of investors decreased and dot-com stock
prices stopped rising. Dot-coms started laying off their staffs; some
merged with competitors. By mid-2001, many were out of business,
their stocks worthless. The strongest companies reviewed their practices,
cut their budgets, and prepared to compete in a new economy.
Web 2.0 and its social environments
After the dot-com bubble burst, a second wave of Web industries arose,
which came to be known as Web 2.0. The leader among them was a successful search engine called Google. (Search engines are software programs that help users locate Web sites. They use programs, called
“spiders” or “robots, ” that go out and collect information, which is then
stored and indexed in the search engine’s Web site databases.) Developed
by two graduate students in 1998, Google started on a shoestring. Its
first offices were in a garage and it was financed by money borrowed
from family and friends. The simplicity of this streamlined search engine
made it an immediate success. Like most Web companies of the new
century, Google added advertising to its pages in 2000, making it a
highly profitable business. By 2004, it was handling the vast majority of
Web searches and was valued in the billions of dollars. It became common for users to say they were “googling” something, rather than simply
“searching for” something.
Many of the second-generation Web sites featured shared platforms
called “communities.” Within the community, members could publicly
express themselves and participate in exchanges. For example, by the
turn of the century, blogs had emerged. A blog (derived from “Web log”)
is an online commentary written by a nonprofessional writer in journal
style that allows readers to respond. By 2006, there were an estimated
sixty million blogs worldwide; by some calculations, a blog was being published every second. Among many other popular Web 2.0 environments are MySpace, a social networking Web site with an estimated 154
million members; and YouTube, a Web site on which users can display
videos. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia written and edited by its
readers, grew into a several-million-article project. These and many other
Web communities are credited with changing the nature of popular culture in the United States by challenging the domain of the entertainment
industry and professional journalists with the voices of ordinary people.
Web 2.0 companies generally do not follow standard business patterns. Most do not immediately make a profit. Commonly, after a new
Web company emerges with something to offer, one of the larger Web
companies buys it—sometimes for a lot of money. In 2005–2006,
Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion; eBay bought Skype, which
provides free phone calls via the Internet, for $2.6 billion; and News
Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million. During that time period alone,
the Web grew more than it had during the entire dot-com boom.
Fifteen-year view of the Web
The World Wide Web celebrated its fifteenth birthday in 2006. An estimated 210 million people in the United States and well over 1 billion
people worldwide were regular surfers of the 92-million-site network,
and these numbers grow daily. Most businesses conduct at least some
part of their operations online. Most people use the Web for everyday aspects of life, such as checking bank balances, accessing work documents
from home, donating to political campaigns or charities, and listening to
music. The Web also has fueled growth in the global economy, creating
new industries that profit by controlling and distributing information
rather than manufacturing goods. Much like railroads and electricity in
the late nineteenth century, the Web has created a new economic era.