An Abbreviated History of the Internet: 7 Milestones That Got Us Here

The Internet contributes $4.9 trillion to the American economy, or more than 20% of gross domestic product. Google alone processes more than 1.2 trillion searches per year, which works out to about 40,000 per second.

Suffice it to say, the Internet is deeply embedded in our lives. Without it, our world wouldn’t be the same. And it’s all down to the tireless efforts of countless scientific innovators and entrepreneurs. People like Sky Dayton, who helped build multiple companies in the 1990s and 2000s to broaden Internet access and improve the user experience, or Tim Berners-Lee, whose technical innovations paved the way for the “public” World Wide Web.

Digital historians have written volumes about the history of the early Internet, and their work is worth reading. For a taste of what’s in store, check out this abbreviated, non-technical overview of the work that got us to this point.

1. Early Innovations in Packet Switching

The origins of the Internet date back to the early Atomic Age. At the time, people in the U.S. government and military chain of command had concerns about the vulnerability of the nation’s hardwired communication system to systemic disruption from a conventional or nuclear war.

They determined that a technology called “packet switching” could reduce that vulnerability by distributing communications across multiple pathways within dispersed computer networks. This had the immediate effect of building redundancy into critical communications networks, but the real, less direct benefit was to birth a platform upon which the modern Internet could be built.

2. Modern Internet Protocols Emerge

Several significant packetized networks developed across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Later in the 1970s, a key innovation emerged that made it much easier to transmit data across these networks, thus spurring their growth.

That innovation was the Internet protocol suite, which “provides end-to-end data communication specifying how data should be packetized, addressed, transmitted, routed, and received. This functionality is organized into four abstraction layers, which classify all related protocols according to each protocol's scope of networking,” Wikipedia says.

The Internet protocol suite links three major protocols: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP). Without any one of these, the Internet we know today wouldn’t be possible.

3. The World Wide Web Is Born

More than a decade would elapse between the development of the Internet protocol suite and the defining event of the early Internet age: the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN in Switzerland.

The World Wide Web made it possible, at least in theory, for everyday people to connect to the Internet without being physically present in one of a small number of academic or government computing halls. However, as we’ll see, another important innovation was needed to drive true mass adoption.

4. Access Opens to the Masses (Sort Of)

If Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web was the “plumbing” of the Internet, early Internet service providers like Sky Dayton’s Earthlink were the taps and drains. Without those ISPs, it was very difficult for normal folks to get online.

Dayton knew this firsthand. Despite being a smart, self-trained computer scientist, he recalls that it took him 80 hours of frustration to access the Web in the early 1990s. The experience convinced him of the need for a more user-friendly ISP; soon enough, Earthlink was born.

Dayton wasn’t the only one working on this challenge, of course. His competitors included CompuServe, Mindspring and the era’s dominant player, America Online. Once they were established, the commercial Internet took off quickly.

5. Web 1.0 Booms (And Busts)

That takeoff created dozens of incredibly valuable businesses. Valuable, at least, on paper. One of the poster children for the excesses of the “dotcom boom,” now known as the Web 1.0 boom (and bust), was Pets.com, which lost $147 million in the first nine months of 2000 and later went bankrupt.

Though this period produced some of the businesses that now dominate the digital economy, such as Amazon and Google, the fallout was big enough to drive the U.S. economy into a recession.

6. Social Networks and Mobile Connectivity Emerge

The digital economy rebuilt slowly after the dotcom bust. Businesses like Sky Dayton’s Boingo, an early WiFi provider, and Helio, an early mobile communications provider, showed that innovation was still possible during these difficult years.

“We have a really cool roadmap,” Dayton told Gizmodo in 2006, discussing his plans for Helio. “We’ve got many new devices in the works and many new services on those devices.”

Helio was soon overshadowed by another earth-shattering digital development, but its legacy lives on in the mobile-first Internet we know today. Meanwhile, social networks like MySpace and Facebook were beginning to take the world by storm.

7. Smartphones Supercharge Web 2.0

Smartphones had existed for several years by the time the iPhone hit the market in 2007, but things really took off quickly after that. By the early 2010s, touchscreen smartphones had eclipsed more cumbersome stylus- and keypad-based devices, and the mobile app economy was rocketing upward. Mobile-friendly social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and later TikTok came into their own and created a “Web 2.0” ecosystem, challenging the browser-based “Web 1.0” dynamic.

There’s More to the Story…

That takes us basically to where we are today. But we’ve only scratched the surface of the fascinating history of the Internet. There’s much more to learn about the technologies, products and people who made it possible, and who keep the party going today.

Of course, this is a story that has unfolded over the past 75 years or so, a mere blink in the longer span of human history (to say nothing of planetary history). Rest assured, entire new chapters are being written as we speak. Perhaps one day, you’ll make your own small contribution to the narrative.