Happy 15th Birthday to the Internet!

[UKnjb]

6 August 1991 - The Internet was born! So on this day, 15 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World-Wide Web Project. There is an interesting article on the BBC's website, here, with a semi-animated timeline that illustrates the notable developments over the last 15 years.



For instance it took 5 months from its birth for the 1st extra-European web server to go on-line and approximately 1 year later, there were still only 26 web servers!

At the 1st August 2006, there were 92,615,362 web sites up and running.

 

[MacFan25863]

At the 1st August 2006, there were 92,615,362 web sites up and running.

Are you sure about that? Last I remembered, Google indexes around 8 billion pages...heck, a Google search for cheese gives you 110,000,000 results alone...

 

[UKnjb]

Me, I'm never sure about anything; just quoting the BBC (maybe a mistake). I'm sure you're correct about the Google results, but that will only give you pages, not so? And there can be multiple pages on each web site that will crank up the count.

 

[MacFan25863]

Me, I'm never sure about anything; just quoting the BBC (maybe a mistake). I'm sure you're correct about the Google results, but that will only give you pages, not so? And there can be multiple pages on each web site that will crank up the count.

Yeah, but even if Google listed 2 pages for each website, that would still mean that almost half of all the websites on the internet are about cheese

 

[treblah]

The Internet and the World-Wide Web are two different things. The Internet as we know it is about 23 years old.

 

[Mal]

It could be that the 96 million figure is based on servers, which would make sense, since most hosting companies host many websites from one server (unless it's a fairly large site).

Happy Birthday!

jW

 

[OutThere]

I'm almost positive that the 93 million figure is based on registered domains, nothing to do with google hitcounts.

 

[UKnjb]

The difference between the Internet and the WWW is well taken - my sloppiness.

For the year 2000:- "Researchers at the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) claim that the Web now contains some 7 million unique sites, a 50 percent increase compared to 1999's 4.7 million."

A further study by OCLC indicated that there were 8.4 million unique sites in 2001, a rate of growth that had declined to 18% from the previous year's 50%.

 

[DMPDX]

The Internet and the World-Wide Web are two different things. The Internet as we know it is about 23 years old.

Exactly. Nasa and of course Al Gore had a big part in creating it.

 

[sushi]

of course Al Gore had a big part in creating it.

Not hardly -- although in his mind he thinks he did play a key role.

BTW, the origins of the Internet go farther back to the late 60's or early 70's if memory serves.

 

[Kardashian]

Are you sure about that? Last I remembered, Google indexes around 8 billion pages...heck, a Google search for cheese gives you 110,000,000 results alone...

But (correct me if I'm wrong) - Google indexes pages, maybe by the 'millions' websites they mean actual domain-names.

For example, Amazon would be the website, that counts towards that whatever-million websites, but pages within Amazon (electronics, for example) would be classed as a page - that Google would index towards its count.

So back to your cheese p ) we could have hundreds of thousands of cooking websites, but maybe all would have 4/5 Cheese-related recipies.

Oooh I don't know! I know naaaaaating!

 

[gekko513]

So back to your cheese p ) we could have hundreds of thousands of cooking websites, but maybe all would have 4/5 Cheese-related recipies.

You don't have to go as far as cooking websites:

 

[Tanglewood]

So where is the Quinceañera being held?

 

[Thomas Veil]

Not hardly

That's arguable. While this article doesn't dispute that the internet was developed in a number of places, it does go on:

It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic).

In May 2005, the organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements honored Al Gore with a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet. "He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf.

 

[Queso]

Ah, good old British ingenuity. Well done Sir Tim, and a lesser well done to whoever came up with that computer he wrote it on

As for Google's index, cisco.com alone has tens of thousands of pages, let alone the amount of pages microsoft.com must have, so I can believe the individual number of sites is correct.

 

[yg17]

At the 1st August 2006, there were 92,615,362 web sites up and running.

How in the hell does one get such a precise number?

 

[angelneo]

How in the hell does one get such a precise number?

From the registry of domain names? I couldn't really remember the name.

If it is based on domain names, it does make sense, as xxx.blogspot.com and yyy.blogspot.com comes from the same domain name...

 

[mkrishnan]

So I thought most American geeks consider the first DARPANet transmission in 1969 to be the birth of the internet. Outside of the US, is that event de-emphasized in comparison to other events?

 

[jrichie]

My ex girlfriend was at CERN in Geneva just after he invented WWW! When I was dating her 1993 onwards I couldn't wait to get to her physics lab and mess about with mosaic and the web.

 

[bousozoku]

So I thought most American geeks consider the first DARPANet transmission in 1969 to be the birth of the internet. Outside of the US, is that event de-emphasized in comparison to other events?

I've always considered ARPANet to be the beginnings of the internet, but not the internet itself. I believe that the 1983 date has to do with the first commercial usage, where there was more to the internet than just ARPANet.

 

[yg17]

Well when were the first tubes connected? I think that would tell us when the internet was officially invented.


I bet the tubes never got clogged in the early days of the internets. Not too many users sending internets to their friends.

 

[bousozoku]

Well when were the first tubes connected? I think that would tell us when the internet was officially invented.


I bet the tubes never got clogged in the early days of the internets. Not too many users sending internets to their friends.

At 50 bps or 110 bps, I wouldn't say that things were clogged, but they were still slow.

 

[dmw007]

Well happy 15th B-Day to the Internet!

 

[LethalWolfe]

At 50 bps or 110 bps, I wouldn't say that things were clogged, but they were still slow.

Me thinks you missed the joke. Or you just didn't find it funny. Although I didn't think it was funny "ha-ha" ('cause that speech has been referenced so much it's just a dead horse joke now) I still thought it was funny "cute."


Lethal

 

[njmac]

Are you sure about that? Last I remembered, Google indexes around 8 billion pages...heck, a Google search for cheese gives you 110,000,000 results alone...

what I really don't understand about google's numbers is that if you keep clicking next, google will show you a message that it has showed you the most relevant sites, and the rest are similar.

View attachment 54446


Then if you click, show me the results without the omitted sites, it still limits you to about 1000 sites and stops. I have to say, with the ommited sites shown, they are all duplicates of what was shown before (896 pages) so the ommited results were showing me 104 sites on additional pages, and all of those are sites listed already! But they are subpages or seperate articles on a site already mentioned.

View attachment 54447

So when they say 92,900,000 results for cheese.... do they mean on the top 1000 sites that they have given us, that cheese is mentioned that many times?