TIM BERNERS-LEE TAKES PART IN AN EVENT MARKING 30 YEARS SINCE HIS PROPOSAL FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB AT CERN NEAR GENEVA IN 2019. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
On this day three decades ago, the World Wide Web was launched, transforming the internet into a user-friendly platform that one can navigate through web browsers and create websites with multimedia content.
All thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, a 37-year-old researcher who released it into the public domain on April 30, 1993.
- Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, believed in keeping it open and free from proprietary control, contributing to its widespread success.
- By the end of 1995, more than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada were spending an average of five hours per week on the internet.
- Today, the web is used by nearly two-thirds of the world's population to access hundreds of millions of active websites, including those of major companies.
- The web's impact goes beyond communication and information sharing, influencing work, learning, and privacy, and disseminating propaganda and disinformation.
- Berners-Lee has advocated maintaining the web's neutrality and promoting transparency to help users differentiate between biased and unbiased information.
