The Web @ 25

[Acorn Newsbot]

Today’s world is so focussed around technology and computers that it may surprise some to learn that today marks the 25 birthday of the World Wide Web. To celebrate this landmark, Nominet has created* timeline website, which details the defining moments in the life of the web from Tim-Berners Lee’s proposal for the ‘World Wide Web’ at CERN in 1989, to the 2014 viral Oscar’s selfie.* Nominet is inviting web users to add their own milestones and predictions to its online Story of the Web.

Nominet conducted a poll in honour of #web25, asking the British public what they think of the Internet.

46% of you think the best thing about the web is the ability to quickly find answers to questions, while 25% of you think it’s brilliant for finding old friends. For people aged 18-24, using it to find a job rated pretty highly, with 28% choosing it as the best thing about the web. Nominet also asked about your favourite website. The top 5 were revealed to be Facebook, the BBC, Amazon, Gmail, and Yahoo. For more information on this study and to discover more about how we use the internet in 2014, click here.

For the full report, The Story of The Web by Jack Schofield, click here.

How it happened…

12th March 1989 – The Beginning

In March 1989, the web was just an idea in the mind of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Working at CERN at the time, he released international colleagues were having difficulties sharing information due to differences in computers and operating systems. As a result, he came up with an idea of Information Management, which would enable easy sharing of data between computers anywhere in the world. The World Wide Web was born.

September 1997 – The Birth of Google

In September 1997 the face of the web changed forever, as two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, registered the domain google.com. In 2014 it’s the world’s biggest search engine, handling over 5 billion searched a day, from countries across the globe.

2003 – The First Social Networks

Although people had been chatting and connecting anonymously on forums such as AOL since the mid-1990s, connecting with your real-life friends over the web had never been done before. saw the both of both Myspace and LinkedIn. Then, in 2004, came Facebook, changing the face of social networking forever.*

2007 – Internet via Phones

In 2007 Apple launched the very first iPhone. By 2013, one in every five people in the world owned a smartphone. Click here for more information on mobile internet.

2014 – 2 Billion Users

Today we reach the 25th anniversary of the web. In 1991 there was only one website. Now there are over 180 million, and more than 2 billion people use the internet. That’s quite an achievement!

So what will the next 25 years bring? It’s hard to say, but we’re looking forward to finding out! If you want more information about the Internet’s first 25 years, you can read our report here.*






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