| YEAR | HISTORICAL EVENT |
|---|---|
| 1962 | In August J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) begins formulating ideas for DARPA, a division of the U.S. Defense Department, to create what will become the ARPANET, the primary ancestor of the Internet. |
| 1969 | BBN is awarded a government contract to build the ARPANET, which is launched Nov. 21. as a computer network between UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah. It utilizes a technology known as "packet switching." |
| 1969 | CompuServe is founded as a subsidiary of Golden United Corporation. It becomes the first public company to offer a dial-up computer network for time sharing, using multiplexer technology. It immediately attracts the financial industry. |
| 1971 | Email is developed by BBN and sent over the ARPANET for the first time. |
| 1975 | Over 50 computers are now connected to the ARPANET. |
| 1978 | CompuServe launches its email service InfoPlex. |
| 1979 | The Source (aka Source Telecomputing Corporation) debuts as one of the first online portals targeted at the general public. It offers news, weather, email, stock quotes, online shopping, database access and other features. CompuServe also releases its version of a similar service called "MicroNet," which it markets through Radio Shack. |
| 1980 | CompuServe expands on the email concept by releasing CB Simulator, an early form of online chat. That same year CompuServe is acquired by H&R Block. |
| 1984 | The husband and wife team of Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner launches Cisco Systems in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company will go on to build routers that will become a part of the eventual internet infrastructure. |
| 1987 | MicroNet becomes CompuServe Information Service. |
| 1987 | UUNET Communication Services debuts as a non-profit organization that faciliates email exchange and other online features, piggybacking off CompuServe network. Communication is delivered over "Plain Old Telephone Service." |
| 1989 | CompuServe moves into market dominance when it acquires The Source only to discontinue it so that it does not competewith CompuServe Information Service. |
| 1989 | UUNET goes commercial as UUNET Technologies. |
| 1989 | The World Wide Web is created by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN. He combines hypertext with TCP and DNS. |
| 1989 | NSFNet replaces the ARPANET as the main backbone of the internet. |
| 1990 | UUNET unveils its own internet backbone called AlterNet, which is completely independent of ARPANET. |
| 1991 | The first website on the World Wide Web is launched. The web address is: http://info.cern.ch/ |
| 1991 | Senator Al Gore (D-TN) authors the High Performance Computing and Communication Bill of 1991, which is signed by President George H.W. Bush, leading to the development of an infrastructure for a commercialized national internet. |
| 1993 | The National Science Foundation determines that management of domain registration should shift from DARPA's National Information Center (NIC) to private enterprise. As a result, the NSF creates InterNIC, which is composed of three companies: Network Solutions, Inc, General Atomics and AT&T. |
| 1994 | Tim Berners-Lee establishes the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. |
| 1994 | A wave of what will be popular websites are launched: Yahoo by David Flo and Jerry Yang, WebCrawler by Brian Pinkerton, Lycos by Michael Mauldin, Earthlink by Sky Dayton and Reed Slatkin. |
| 1994 | The first popular web browser, Mosaic Netscape 0.9 is released by Mosaic Communication Corporation, founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark. Soon after the launch the company's name changes to Netscape. |
| 1995 | AOL introduces a marketing plan that begins to attack internet leader CompuServe, which charges hourly fees for its service. AOL offers a monthly subscriber fee and quickly gains market share. |
| 1995 | UUNET becomes a publicly-traded company. |
| 1995 | More websites debut that will become big names online including eBay by Pierre Omidyar, Amazon by Jeff Bezos and Craigslist by Craig Newmark. |
| 1995 | Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) acquires Network Solutions. |
| 1995 | Netscape turns down a partnership proposal with Microsoft that would incorporate Netscape Navigator with the Windows operating system. Instead, Microsoft releases its own browser, Internet Explorer, packed free with subsequent versions of Windows 95. Netscape utilizes newly-founded InfoSeek as its default search. Also coinciding with Windows 95 is the launch of Microsoft's search engine MSN. |
| 1996 | UUNET is purchased by Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) for $12 billion. Later in the year MCI acquires MFS for $12.4 billion. |
| 1996 | Google is created as a research project by Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It officially starts off as a private company two years later. |
| 1996 | Inktomi launches the HotBot search engine. Another new search engine is InfoSpace, which will go on to own Dogpile, MetaCrawler, WebCrawler and WebFetch. |
| 1996 | Bay Networks creates a subsidiary company called Netgear, which creates computer networks for small businesses and homes. Netgear will be purchased by Nortel within two years and then will become its own company in 2002. |
| 1997 | Microsoft's free browser begins to hurt Netscape financially. |
| 1997 | Ask Jeeves becomes a new search engine that ranks results based on popularity. |
| 1997 | Excite purchases WebCrawler, which had been the first search engine to index entire web pages. |
| 1997 | Bob Parsons launches GoDaddy. |
| 1998 | Worldcom purchases CompuServe from H&R Block for $12 billion. The next day AOL sells its network to Worldcom and in turn purchases CompuServe Information Service. The following year Worldcom will purchase MCI and change its name to MCI Worldcom, but will quickly move toward bankruptcy. |
| 1998 | eBay becomes a publicly-traded company. |
| 1998 | President Bill Clinton signs the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which modifies copyright laws regarding digital transmission over the internet. |
| 1998 | Netscape leaders are subpoenaed to testify in the Justice Department's anti-trust suit against Microsoft. Later in the year AOL will purchase Netscape. |
| 1998 | Michael Robertson develops and launches MP3.com for Z Company. The following year it will go public and set a record for raising the most money (over $370 million) in its opening day as a tech stock. |
| 1998 | The U.S. Government creates the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as the official non-profit organization to manage top level domains such as .com, .net and .org. It will begin operation the following year. |
| 1999 | Shawn Fanning and his Uncle John Fanning create Napster in San Mateo, CA. It is a peer to peer file sharing system that allows users to swap music files for free. |
| 1999 | The first popular web browser, Mosaic Netscape 0.9 is released by Mosaic Communication Corporation, founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark. Soon after the launch the company's name changes to Netscape. |
| 2000 | Rock band Metallica and then Rapper Dr. Dre sue Napster for making their recordings illegally available for free over the internet. |
| 2000 | VeriSign, Inc. acquires Network Solutions for $21 billion. They sell it off three years later to Pivitol Equity Group. |
| 2000 | The major record labels, represented by the RIAA, sue MP3.com for allowing its My.MP3.com service to create unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. MP3.com is crushed financially, as it agrees to settle with the labels for over $200 million. |
| 2000 | After acquiring Mindspring, Earthlink becomes the nation's second most popular ISP behind AOL. |
| 2000 | The name UUNET is abandoned by Worldcom but it will briefly revive the brand name three years later. |
| 2000 | Bell Atlantic and Vodafone enter a joint venture that creates Verizon Wireless. Later in the year Bell Atlantic merges with GTE to become Verizon Communications, Inc., becoming one of the largest mergers in U.S. History at the time. |
| 2000 | The RIAA, representing the major record labels, sues Napster for copyright infringement. |
| 2000 | Google pioneers a new form of online advertising, selling keywords. |
| 2000 | Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), in which the Japanese government has a majority ownership, purchases internet service provider Verio for $5 billion. |
| 2001 | AOL merges with Time Warner, becoming the biggest merger in U.S. History. But the merger proves to be a financial disaster and in a few years the company name will revert back to Time Warner, although AOL will continue to be part of the company. |
| 2001 | Napster is unable to comply with a court ruling to block copyrighted works from being accessed for free, so the site shuts down in July. |
| 2001 | MP3.com is acquired by Vivendi Universal, but is unable to create sufficient revenue streams. |
| 2001 | Apple Computer unveils its mp3 player, the iPod. |
| 2002 | Comcast completes its acquisition of AT&T Broadband. |
| 2002 | PayPal is purchased by eBay. |
| 2002 | Napster declares bankruptcy. An attempt by major label and media conglomerate Bertlesman to purchase the assets for $85 million is blocked by a federal judge. The assets are then auctioned off to software company Roxio. |
| 2003 | CNET purchases the MP3.com domain - but not the site's technology - from Vivendi Universal. It then replaces the old site with its new service. |
| 2003 | Due to financial troubles, Earthlink begins to downsize. That same year Earthlink co-founder Reed Slatkin pleads guilty to defrauding big investors out of millions of dollars in a "Ponzi Scheme" and is sentenced to 14 years in prison. |
| 2003 | Brad Greenspan, founder of eUniverse, creates MySpace, which becomes the blueprint for building online communities. |
| 2003 | Google purchases Applied Semantics, which crafts the AdSense program. |
| 2003 | Overture, formerly called GoTo, purchases four year-old company AllTheWeb for $70 million and also announces it will purchase Alta Vista. Later in the year Yahoo buys Overture for $235 million, even though Overture has not turned a profit. |
| 2003 | Microsoft agrees to pay AOL $750 million regarding the Netscape issues of the late nineties. In exchange, AOL will phase out the Netscape brand in the next year, as the deal includes AOL's distribution of Internet Explorer at no fee for seven years. |
| 2003 | HotBot is purchased by Lycos, which discontinues the name. |
| 2003 | Microsoft announces it is dropping Looksmart for search services. Because Microsoft was responsible for a majority of Looksmart's income, Looksmart shares fell in half in one day on the news. |
| 2003 | The Safari web browser is introduced by Apple Computer along with the i-Tunes Music Store, which will mark the beginning of the first successful legal music downloading service. |
| 2004 | Google becomes a publicly-traded company. |
| 2004 | The Firefox web browser is designed by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross for the Mozilla Foundation. |
| 2004 | eBay buys 25% of Craigslist. |
| 2005 | Comcast and Time Warner enter a joint venture and purchase Adelphia Cable. |
| 2005 | GoDaddy, for the first time, tops Network Solutions for most managing the most number of domain names. |
| 2005 | IAC announces it will buy Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion. The name is shortened to just Ask within a year. |
| 2006 | Verizon acquires MCI, which includes UUNET. |
| 2006 | Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchases MySpace parent company eUniverse for $325 million. |
| 2007 | Responding to a continued disappointing financial outlook, Earthlink cuts its staff in half. |