The Internet had its origins in 1969 as an experimental project of the Advanced Research Project Agency ("ARPA"). First called ARPANET, the network linked computers and computer networks owned by the military, defense contractors, and university laboratories conducting defense-related research.
The World Wide Web concept was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and scientists at CERN (Geneva), the European centre for High Energy Physics, who were interested in making easier to retrieve research documentation. But it wasn't until 1993 when Mark Andreesen of NCSA (National Center for SuperComputing Applications, Illinois) launched Mosaic X, that the WWW really started to take off. In 1994 there were 3000 web sites world wide, 25K in 1995, and 250K in 1996.
Somewhere during 1995 is the point where there were enough Internet users for programs to be profitable. Growth from that point was totally unreal.
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