Internet

An online network linking million of computers throughout the world, the Internet is used by millions of people for things like research, communication, and commerce transactions. Via technology that spawned the "information age," the Internet has become a tool millions of individuals employ every day for professional, educational, and personal exchanges. As the Internet's popularity has increased, so have the opportunities for making money online. The skyrocketing stock prices of Internet-based companies like Web browser firm Netscape, book retailer Amazon.com, and auction site ebay.com in the mid-1990s reflected common perceptions about the Internet's potential as a commerce tool. Although investors began shunning these stocks later in the decade as analysts started to examine the business models of Internet-based businesses more closely, the Internet already had been firmly established as a viable means of conducting commerce.

The precursor of the Internet, ARPAnet, was created in 1969 by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the directive of U.S. Department of Defense, which sought a means for governmental communication in the event of nuclear war. To create what would become the world's largest wide area network (WAN), ARPA chose Interface Message Processors (IMPs) to connect host computers via telephone lines. To create the underlying network needed to connect the IMPs, ARPA hired Bolt Beranek and Newman, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research and development firm. The last component needed was a protocol, or a set of standards, that would facilitate communication between the host sites. This was developed internally by the Network Working Group. ARPAnet's Network Control Protocol allowed users to access computers and printers in remote locations and exchange files between computers. This protocol eventually was replaced by the more sophisticated Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which allowed ARPAnet to be connected with a several other networks that had been launched by various institutions. It was this group of networks that eventually formed the core of what later became known as the Internet. No longer useful, ARPAnet was shut down in 1990.

A National Science Foundation decree that prevented commercial use of the Internet was dissolved in 1991, the same year the World Wide Web came into existence. By then, personal computer use by businesses, institutions, and individuals had spiraled. When the graphics-based Web browsing program known as Mosaic was released in 1993, the Internet's growth exploded. Firms like Netscape and Yahoo! were founded soon after, making access to the Internet even easier. By 1996, an estimated 40 million individuals were accessing the Internet, and by 1999, that number had grown to 200 million.