Larry Magid: World Wide Web Turns 25

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— It’s been 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee published a paper that outlined what was to become the World Wide Web. This should not be confused with the anniversary of the Internet, which happened in 1969 as a Defense Department project.

What’s the difference, you ask? On the early Internet there were all sorts of services you could call software applications and the Web was eventually one of them.

In 1994 the browser came about, which is what made the Internet accessible. What the World Wide Web is a way to go from place to place. It’s how everything is connected.

When you went on the Internet back in those days, you used UNIX, which was still true even after Berners-Lee invented the Web. If you aren’t familiar with UNIX, just think of a really complicated command language that the average person wouldn’t be able to figure out.

Perhaps the most popular early browser most people are familiar with and many of us used it, was Netscape Navigator. The browser that preceded that was Mosaic, which was co-founded by venture capitalist and millionaire, Marc Andreessen. He would actually go on to co-found Netscape.

What eventually killed Netscape was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer when they started bundling it with Windows. It’s an important piece of history and all of that helped create what we have today.

Berners-Lee, or Sir Tim Berners-Lee, to be exact, was knighted by the Queen and is still very active. He was recently given the honor of asking Edward Snowden the first question at his SXSW appearance where he talked about Internet privacy.