The 50 most significant moments of Internet history

By Nate Lanxon on 25 September 2008, 4:02pm

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The current era of the Internet is often dubbed Web 2.0, but it's really just an evolution of Web 1.0. Much modern Web 2.0 technology got started at the dawn of the Web 1.0 era, and has evolved over the last ten years to give us the advanced interfaces and online applications we rely on today.

Another Netscape great, and first launching with Netscape Navigator 2.0 as LiveScript, Brendan Eich's JavaScript got its name after a collaboration with Sun Microsystems in December of the same year. Now stupendously prolific, JavaScript helped enable interactivity within Web sites, and now underpins Ajax -- the modern Web technology that enabled desktop environment-like interactivity on sites such as Google Docs, Flickr and millions of blogs and Web 2.0 properties.

Jorn Barger first coined the term 'weblog' after 'logging' things he found on the 'Web' on his site RobotWisdom. He's still a blogger. But it was later, around April 1999, that Peter Merholz invented the word 'blog' after deciding to pronounce 'weblog' as 'wee-blog', but deciding it was too long a word.

Mere months after Merholz introduced the word 'blog' to the Webosphere (we can coin words too), Pyra Labs launched Blogger, allowing the world to easily create their own blogs, for free. Pitas.com launched its similar free weblog service earlier, in July, but Blogger stole the show, ultimately being acquired by Internet behemoth Google.

Originally launched atop the commercial .com domain before switching to .org, Wikipedia is now one of the most visited sites on the Web, and testament to the possibilities of harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds -- one of the fundamental aspects of what is known as Web 2.0.

Originally a hub for just tech news, digg has since expanded into many new areas, including politics, entertainment news and after months of user requests, images and videos, too. It's a socially moderated news site, run by its users, and one of the most successful products of the Web 2.0 era in terms of popularity, despite its lack of a successful acquisition.