Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web

How the Web Changed the Internet – and the World

On 23 August 1991, the World Wide Web became publicly accessible – unlocking a new way for anyone to browse, publish, and connect.

Web vs. Internet: What’s the Difference?

The World Wide Web is one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, turning the vast, technical infrastructure of the Internet into something accessible and useful for everyone. What began as a tool for researchers to share information quickly evolved into a universal platform for communication, creativity, and commerce. Without the Web, today’s digital economy, social media, and even online learning as we know them would not exist.

The Internet is the global network of networks—cables, routers, satellites, and protocols that let computers talk to each other.
The World Wide Web (the “Web”) is a service that runs on top of the Internet using technologies like HTTP, HTML, URLs, and web browsers.
Put simply: the Internet is the infrastructure, and the Web is one of the most transformative uses of that infrastructure.

Why 23 August 1991 Matters

In August 1991, the Web stepped beyond CERN and the physics community to wider public awareness.
The first website at info.cern.ch introduced how to create pages and browse the Web; 23 August is widely celebrated as the day the Web became accessible to the public (“Internaut Day”). Earlier that month (6 August 1991), Tim Berners-Lee posted to the alt.hypertext newsgroup, describing the project and how to try it—laying the foundation for public participation.

Short Timeline: Key Web Milestones (1991–Present)

• 6 Aug 1991: Tim Berners-Lee announces the World Wide Web on Usenet; the first website explains how to use and build the Web.
• 23 Aug 1991: Commonly celebrated as “Internaut Day,” marking early public access to the Web beyond CERN.
• 1993: NCSA Mosaic 1.0 ships (April), bringing inline images and a friendlier interface; 30 Apr 1993 CERN places core Web technologies in the public domain—no royalties—accelerating global adoption.
• 1994: Tim Berners-Lee founds the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to steward open web standards.
• 1995: JavaScript appears, enabling interactive pages and web applications in the browser.
• 17 Dec 1996: CSS Level 1 becomes a W3C Recommendation, separating content from presentation and ushering in modern design.
• 2003: WordPress launches, catalysing user-friendly publishing and powering a large share of today’s websites.
• 2004–2006: Social platforms scale on the Web (Facebook 2004; YouTube 2005; Twitter 2006), shifting how people share and discover content.
• 2008: Google Chrome debuts, accelerating performance, security, and rapid standards adoption across browsers.
• 2014: HTML5 becomes an official W3C Recommendation, standardising rich, plugin-free multimedia and semantic structure.
• 2015: Let’s Encrypt launches, automating free TLS certificates and propelling the move to HTTPS by default.
• 2019: WebAssembly (Wasm) becomes a W3C Recommendation—enabling near-native performance for heavy apps in the browser.
• 2015–2022: HTTP/2 (2015) and HTTP/3 (2022) modernise how browsers and servers communicate, improving speed, reliability, and security.
• 2024–2025: HTTP/3 reaches broad browser and server support; the Web continues evolving toward faster, more private, app-like experiences.

Over the years, the Web has grown far beyond what its inventor imagined, but its guiding principles of openness and accessibility remain as important as ever. It has broken down barriers to knowledge, given individuals a global voice, and enabled businesses of every size to reach audiences they could never have dreamed of before.

The Web’s Ongoing Impact

From static pages to immersive apps, the Web remains the most open, universal platform for publishing and software delivery.
Openness and standards keep it resilient. Looking ahead, advances in performance (Wasm), transport (HTTP/3), and security (ubiquitous HTTPS) point to a faster, safer, and more inclusive Web for everyone.