Internet Decades

ARPANET, developed with US defense funding in the late 1960s, is widely regarded as the internet's precursor.

Dial-up internet in the 1990s produced a distinctive connection sound and tied up the household phone line.

AOL popularized home instant messaging, and its You've Got Mail alert became a cultural catchphrase.

Yahoo began in 1994 as a simple website directory and became one of the early web's most visited sites.

Wikipedia, built entirely by volunteer editors since 2001, became one of the world's most visited sites.

Facebook launched in 2004 for university students before growing into one of the world's largest social networks.

YouTube, acquired by Google within two years of launching in 2005, became the leading video-sharing platform.

Twitter's original 140-character limit, set in 2006, helped shape it into a hub for real-time news.

Instagram, built around square photo filters from its 2010 launch, was acquired by Facebook two years later.

MySpace's customizable profile pages helped it become one of the first mass-popular social networks.

Reddit, founded in 2005, organizes discussion into thousands of communities and is nicknamed the internet's front page.

Internet memes spread through rapid remixing online, often reflecting shared cultural moments.

Google began as a Stanford research project in 1998 before becoming the dominant internet search engine.

TikTok's short, algorithm-driven videos fueled one of the fastest app growth stories in internet history.

Amazon launched as an online bookstore in 1994 before growing into one of the world's largest retailers.

Napster pioneered peer-to-peer music sharing in 1999 before copyright lawsuits led to its shutdown.

Netflix began as DVD-by-mail before its 2007 streaming launch grew it into a major original content producer.

eBay started as a 1995 collectibles auction site and popularized consumer-to-consumer online selling.

Craigslist grew from a 1995 email list into a classifieds site that kept its simple text design for decades.

Emoji, created in Japan in the late 1990s, grew from a small set into thousands of symbols used worldwide.

The dot-com bubble's intense speculative investment ended in the early 2000s collapse of many internet firms.

Broadband internet's always-on, higher speeds in the 2000s enabled the rise of video streaming services.

Snapchat popularized disappearing messages from 2011 and later introduced widely copied Stories and filters.

Wi-Fi, commercialized in the late 1990s, freed internet devices from cables and became a worldwide standard.