Tim Berners-Lee Net Worth: Google Doodle Celebrates World Wide Web Turning 30

On Tuesday, Google Doodle celebrated the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web – the day Sir Tim Berners-Lee came up with the concept of the internet as it is known today.

“‘Vague but exciting.’ This was how Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s boss responded to his proposal titled ‘Information Management: A Proposal,’ submitted on this day in 1989, when the inventor of the World Wide Web was a 33-year-old software engineer. Initially, Berners-Lee envisioned ‘a large hypertext database with typed links,’ named ‘Mesh,’ to help his colleagues at CERN [a large nuclear physics laboratory in Switzerland] share information amongst multiple computers,” a Google blog post on the significance of the doodle read.

In March 1989, with the help of Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee designed and built the first web browser. By 1991, the external web servers were up and running. Three years later, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was made up of various companies that volunteered to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Internet.

While Berners-Lee was often credited with inventing the internet, it was not the case. While the internet was in existence since the 1960s, it was his online application which used innovations like HTML language, URL and hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP, that revolutionized the age-old invention.

Born on June 8, 1955 in London, Berners-Lee currently works as a рrоfеѕѕоr оf Соmрutеr Ѕсіеnсе аt the Unіvеrѕіtу of Охfоrd and thе dіrесtоr оf Wеb Ѕсіеnсе Rеѕеаrсh Іnіtіаtіvе. He is also the fоundеr аnd рrеѕіdеnt оf Ореn Dаtа Іnѕtіtutе. He is married to Rosemary Leith and has two children from his first marriage.

According to The Wealth Record, Berners-Lee has an estimated net worth of $60 million. People, unaware of his professional history, have often been surprised to learn that Berners-Lee’s fortune falls far shorter than other tech moguls like Apple CEO Tim Cook ($625 million) and founder of Microsoft Bill Gates ($95 billion).

Berners-Lee, who had the potential to become a billionaire or even a trillionaire had he patented his revolutionary product, made his idea available freely with no royalties due. This meant that everyone was welcomed to build on his idea, including setting up domains and trafficking information through it without owing the founder of World Wide Web a dime, Celebrity Net Worth reported.

He did, however, get awarded $1.3 million as the cash prize for inventing the World Wide Web by former President of the Republic of Finland, Tarja Halonen, in 2004, at Finland's Millennium Technology Prize. He also received the honor of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) the same year, going on to win a number of awards thereafter.

“There are very few innovations that have truly changed everything,” said Jeff Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. “The Web is the most impactful innovation of our time.”