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1969- Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. It was designed for research, education, and government organizations.
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1972- Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. Tomlinson uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.
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1982- The word 'Internet' is used for the first time.
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1988- A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.
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1989- Tim Berners-Lee develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics).
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1994- 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.
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1995- Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.
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The term “weblog” is coined. It’s later shortened to “blog.”
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1997- Internet traffic records are broken as the NASA website broadcasts images taken by Pathfinder on Mars. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day.
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Google opens its first office in California.
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1999- College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap music over the Internet.
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1999- “E-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly spreads.
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Wikipedia is created!
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About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.
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Amazon starts profiting as more people start buying and selling online.
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2001- Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music. The file-swapping company says it is developing a subscription-based service.
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The Google search index reached 3 billion searchable web documents
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Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.
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2005- YouTube.com is launched.
