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Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.
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The word “Internet” is used for the first time.
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A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.
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The White House launches its website www.whitehouse.gov.
Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary. Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser. -
Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30 million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S. households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.
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Google opens its first office, in California.
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It's estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music files each month.
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YouTube.com is launched.
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There are more than 92 million websites online.
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Colorado Rockies' computer system crashes when it receives 8.5 million hits within the first 90 minutes of World Series ticket sales.
