World Wide Web Public Anniversary: 20 Years Since The Technology Behind The Web Was Released Into Public Domain

April 30, 2013, marks the 20th anniversary of the technology behind the World Wide Web becoming available for free. CERN notes: “By making the software required to run a web server freely available, along with a basic browser and a library of code, the web was allowed to flourish.”

While the World Wide Web was invented by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, the technology was not available for royalty-free usage at the time. While other technologies such as Gopher and WAIS were available for retrieving data at the time, the release of the web’s technology for royalty free usage in 1993 led to “its rapid adoption and development” said CERN.

In 1993, the web “accounted for 1 percent of Internet traffic,” said CERN, with the rest of the Internet consisting of email, file transfers and remote access. In comparison to 1993, according to CERN, “Twenty years on there are an estimated 630 million websites online.”

Read the original statement by CERN marking the technology’s release into public domain below.