Belfast Telegraph Home > News > Features
Ten years of the net Just a decade
ago this week, the $3bn flotation of Netscape signalled the start of the
mass internet age. Danny Bradbury explores how the web conquered the world
- and changed our lives
1995: BROWSERS AND PORTALS
On 9 August Netscape floats, ushering in a five-year dot.com boom. The
$3bn flotation is the most spectacular in a series of commercial landmarks
that includes the launch of Amazon.com (in July) and direct internet
services from CompuServe (April) and AOL (October), which allow
subscribers to the different services to exchange e-mails. But it is the
mass availability of Netscape's user-friendly browser (launched in 1994)
that brings the internet to ordinary people with PCs and Macs rather than
specialists with Unix terminals.
* Annual fee introduced for the registration of domain names.
* Microsoft starts giving away Internet Explorer 1.0 with its Windows
95 operating system.
* RealAudio launched.
* The Vatican releases a web site.
* AltaVista search engine launched.
1996: ONLINE TRAVEL TAKES OFF
Expedia and Travelocity launch their online travel services in the US.
Pioneers of the internet phenomenon of "disintermediation" (cutting out
the middleman), these sites pave the way for no-frills airlines such as
Easyjet and Ryanair (which go online in 1998 and 2000 respectively) to
sell their services at hitherto unimaginably low prices. The ease,
flexibility and cost-effectiveness of internet booking has subsequently
brought scores of once exotic locations within financial range of British
travellers, transforming local economies around the world.
* Israeli company Mirabilis introduces instant messaging with its ICQ
service.
* Yahoo floats. Company value hits $1bn.
* Netscape's share of browser market peaks at 87 per cent. (Internet
Explorer has 4 per cent.)
* Tesco begins Tesco Direct service.
* Ebay's AuctionWeb receives its millionth bid and is renamed eBay.
1997: THE SHOP.COM BOOM
AOL's subscriber base reaches 10 million (up from 5 million in 1996),
while amazon.com records its millionth customer. The latter's initial
public offering (which raises $54m) highlights the potential of
e-commerce. The scramble for web "presence" accelerates. Its importance
had already been seen in December 1996, when Harrods won the right to use
the harrods.com domain name from a cybersquatter who had tried to charge
it £100,000 for the privilege. In January the business.com domain sells
for $150,000. Two years later it sells again for $7.5m.
* NASA's website receives 46 million hits when Pathfinder sends back
pictures from Mars.
* First recorded use of the term "weblog" to describe an online
journal.
* NASA's website receives 46 million hits when Pathfinder sends back
pictures from Mars.
* Members of online Heaven's Gate cult commit mass suicide.
1998: RISE OF SEARCH ENGINES
Google, started by two Stanford graduates, initially serves 10,000
queries per day, but within a year is answering 3 million. Today it serves
over 250 million per day - almost half of all US-originated queries - and
indexes 8 billion pages.
* Online Drudge Report breaks story of Clinton-Lewinsky relationship.
When the Starr Report into the scandal is released online eight months
later, the internet has its busiest day ever.
* Launches of Egg online banking, amazon.co.uk, easyjet.co.uk and
lastminute.com.
* Every nation in the world is online.
1999: FILE-SHARING
Student Shawn Fanning launches the Napster peer-to-peer service,
enabling computers to share files directly with each other. Within months,
the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has begun legal
action for copyright infringement. Further lawsuits follow, and, although
its user base reaches 26 million by 2001, Napster dies out, selling its
name to Roxio.
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] service launches, using spare computing power on PCs
worldwide to analyse radio signals from space for signs of alien life.
* BlackBerry launches in US.
* Melissa virus infects 1 million PCs worldwide.
* A list of MI6 agents is released on the web.
* Tesco launches online shopping.
* Egg launches UK's first internet credit card.
* US Department of Commerce describes online sales as "a major
indicator of [US] economic health".
2000: THE BUBBLE BURSTS
AOL agrees $350bn merger with "old media" giant Time Warner. The Nasdaq
new-tech share index peaks at 5,048.62. By the end of 2002 the index has
fallen to 1,114.11 - and AOL/Time Warner posts a loss of $99bn. Time
Warner drops AOL from its name the following year.
* The "I Love You" worm becomes the costliest in the history of the
internet.
* Popbitch celebrity gossip website launches.
* The scientist Laurence Godfrey wins £15,000 in damages from Demon
Internet for failing to remove "squalid, obscene and defamatory" remarks
about him.
* Lastminute.com is valued at £800m on flotation.
2001: PORN, WORMS & VIRUSES
The web's dark side asserts itself. Following the spread of the
VBS/Loveletter internet worm in 2001, a spate of other worms are released
including Sircam, CodeRed and Klez. Meanwhile, an FBI investigation into
paedophile websites identifies 250,000 suspected users, including 7,200 in
the UK. More than 1,200 people are arrested. Today there are 4.2 million
pornographic websites - 12 per cent of all sites.
* Napster is banned from distributing copyrighted music.
* Apple launches the iPod.
* Microsoft launches Windows XP operating system, with its built-in
support for wireless networking.
* Wikipedia starts.
* BlackBerry launches in Europe.
* Taliban bans internet use in Afghanistan.
2002: ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS
Friends Reunited began reconnecting old school friends in 2000, growing
from 3,000 members in its first year to 4 million at the start of 2002.
Meanwhile, a new generation of social websites including Friendster.com
and EveryonesConnected.com develops the theme. Today there are more than
300 such sites, including Google's invitation-only service, Orkut.
* Popbitch withdraws unfounded rumours about David and Victoria Beckham
after the couple threaten legal action.
* Video of the murder of Daniel Pearl is shown online.
* Internet Explorer's share of the browser market reaches 96 per
cent.
* Internet's global "population" reaches 428 million.
*Apple sells its millionth iPod.
2003: SOUND & PICTURES
Apple launches the iTunes Music Store, selling 20 million
copy-protected tracks in seven months. Microsoft's response - the MSN
Music Store - isn't ready until 2004, but research firm Forrester predicts
that by 2008 one third of all music sales will be made online. Digital
cameras outsell film cameras in the US for the first time.
* Kazaa, a file-sharing program, becomes the most downloaded software
ever.
* Howard Dean's internet-based presidential campaign threatens to
revolutionise US politics (left).
* Wireless hotspots take off, freeing internet users from their desks.
BT promises to establish 4,000 such hotspots across the UK by the summer
of 2004.
* Recording Industry Association of America sues 261 people for
distributing copyright music files over the internet.
2004: YEAR OF THE BLOG
Although the term "weblog" was coined in 1997, 2004 is the year the
blog achieves critical mass. Salam Pax, the "Baghdad blogger", becomes
popular during the Iraq war, while in the US, Fox news anchor Dan Rather
resigns after bloggers discredit one of his stories. AOL begins to include
blogging tools in the latest versions of its software, while Microsoft
launches its MSN Spaces blogging service. Today there are an estimated
14.7 million blogs, with a new one created every 7.4 seconds.
* Google goes public for $1.7bn.
* Cherie Blair is noticed using eBay.
* MyDoom worm becomes internet's worst-ever virus.
* US film industry serves lawsuits against sites hosting
BitTorrent-based files.
* The global online population reaches 934 million.
2005: ONLINE NEWS
Citizen journalists are now appearing daily, not just on the big news
sites. Nowpublic.com and Scoopt.com offer people the chance to be
photojournalists, while podcasting (a grassroots internet radio movement
akin to audio blogging) is hugely popular after just one year. A report by
the Carnegie Corporation shows that 18- to 34-year-olds in the US are
twice as likely to use an internet portal as a printed newspaper for daily
news.
* Skype Internet telephony service handles its ten billionth minute of
voice conversation.
* Fraudsters send 19.2 million "phishing" e-mails in July alone.
* More than half of British internet subscriptions are through
broadband.
* 87 per cent of the world's e-mail is spam.
Back
| Return to top
| Printable
Story
|