20 years later, what’s next for the ’Net? - Business - The Boston Globe

Not a bad start

"Twenty years ago today, somebody flipped a switch and opened the floodgates. On April 30, 1995, the last federally funded portion of the Internet shut down, turning it into a free-enterprise operation.

It was just one major breakthrough of 1995, the year the Internet achieved lift-off. Amazon, eBay, craigslist, and Match.com all went live that year, while Microsoft rolled out its first Internet Explorer browser. In 1995, about 16 million people were online, less than half a percent of the human race. Just five years later, 5 percent of the world had logged on. Today, it’s 3 billion of us — 40 percent of the planet. Probably no other technology has caught on so fast, built so many new businesses, or demolished so many old ones."

20 years later, what’s next for the ’Net? - Business - The Boston Globe