How Old Is the Internet? ARPANET, WWW and the Real Timeline

Most people think the internet was born the day they first went online. In reality, the internet is almost 60 years old, and the World Wide Web is only 35. The two are not the same thing, even though almost everyone today uses the word internet for both. Here is the real timeline.

Internet is not the same as Web

The internet is the physical infrastructure: cables, routers, protocols that connect computers. The World Wide Web is one single application on top of it, invented in 1989. Email and FTP were there 20 years earlier.

1969: The first message on ARPANET was a crash

On October 29, 1969, UCLA sent the first message to the Stanford Research Institute on the ARPANET. The planned word was LOGIN. Only the letters L and O actually arrived, then the computer at Stanford crashed. So the first internet message in history was the word LO, which in hindsight reads like the start of hello. The ARPANET was built by DARPA, a research agency of the US Department of Defense.

1971: The first email and the @ sign

Ray Tomlinson wrote the first email between two computers in 1971. He picked the @ sign as a separator because it did not appear in normal text on any computer keyboard at the time. Tomlinson later could not remember what his first email actually said. In an interview he only said: It was probably QWERTYUIOP or something like that.

1983: The actual birthday of the internet

On January 1, 1983, the ARPANET was fully switched to TCP/IP. Computer scientists consider this date the actual birthday of the internet, because from that day on, different networks could talk to each other. The word internet stands for between networks, and that is exactly what became technically possible on that day.

1985: The first domain in the world

On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com was registered as the first .com domain in the world. The company Symbolics built Lisp machines back then, a type of computer for artificial intelligence. Symbolics went bankrupt in 1996, but the domain lived on and was sold to a collector in 2009 for an undisclosed amount.

1989: Tim Berners-Lee invents the Web

At CERN in Geneva, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for a new document system in 1989. His boss wrote on the cover page: Vague, but exciting. Berners-Lee invented HTML, HTTP, and the URL. The first website went live on December 20, 1990, and still exists today at info.cern.ch. The Web was released to everyone in 1993, with no license fees, which is what made its explosive growth possible in the first place.

1993: The first graphical browser, Mosaic

Before Mosaic, the Web was plain text. Mosaic could display images and made the Web usable for regular people. A co-developer of Mosaic later founded Netscape, whose browser was the most used in the world until the late 90s. Internet Explorer from Microsoft came in 1995 and overtook Netscape in the late 90s during the Browser Wars.

1994 to 1998: Amazon, eBay, Google are born

Amazon started in 1994 as an online bookstore in Jeff Bezos's garage. eBay followed in 1995, Yahoo the same year. Google was founded in 1998, at a time when AltaVista was considered the best search engine. Interesting fact: Google was not the first search engine, it was the 20th. It won because its PageRank ranking algorithm was fundamentally better.

Facebook started in 2004 in Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room. YouTube followed in 2005, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010. Context: When Facebook entered the market, MySpace already had 75 million users and was considered untouchable. Facebook overtook MySpace in 2008.

2007: The iPhone starts the mobile web

On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone went on sale. The App Store came a year later. Before that, the internet on a phone was basically a text console. Only in 2014, meaning 45 years after ARPANET, did mobile traffic overtake desktop traffic worldwide. Since then, most people spend more time online on their phones than on their computers.

2020 to today: Video, AI, and 5.5 billion users

The COVID pandemic in 2020 was the biggest user surge since the iPhone. Video calls became routine, and TikTok overtook Google in time spent. In late 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT and kicked off the current AI phase. Today, around 5.5 billion people use the internet, roughly 68 percent of the world's population.

Counter-intuitive fact

The Web has only been publicly available since 1991. Anyone over 35 started their life without the Web. Anyone over 55 started theirs without the internet at all. It feels ancient, but compared to fire, the wheel, or writing, it is absurdly young.

The seven most important dates at a glance

October 29, 1969: first ARPANET message. 1971: first email with the @ sign. January 1, 1983: switch to TCP/IP, technically the birthday of the internet. March 15, 1985: first domain symbolics.com. December 20, 1990: first website. 1993: Mosaic browser with images. 2007: iPhone starts the mobile internet era.

Frequently asked questions

When was the internet invented?▾

ARPANET launched on October 29, 1969. But the modern internet's birthday is considered January 1, 1983, the switch to TCP/IP.

What was the first internet message?▾

The planned word was LOGIN. Only LO actually arrived because the destination computer crashed. That was on October 29, 1969.

Who invented the World Wide Web?▾

Briton Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Geneva. He wrote the first proposal in 1989 and launched the first website on December 20, 1990.

What is the difference between the internet and the Web?▾

The internet is the network infrastructure with TCP/IP as its base. The Web is just one application on top of it, like email or FTP. The Web and the internet are not the same.

What was the first registered domain?▾

symbolics.com, registered on March 15, 1985 by a company that built Lisp machines. The domain still exists today.

When did the first email arrive?▾

1971, sent by Ray Tomlinson, who picked the @ sign as a separator. He could not remember the content of his own first email.

When did mobile overtake desktop?▾

In 2014, meaning 45 years after the first ARPANET message and seven years after the iPhone.

How many people use the internet?▾

Around 5.5 billion, roughly 68 percent of the world's population. In 1995 it was less than 1 percent.

How Old Is the Internet Really? A Brief History of the Web