The History of the Internet

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eBay
In the summer of 1995, Pierre Omidyar was having dinner at home in Campbell with his fiancée, Pam Wesley. Wesley collected PEZ dispensers, and she mentioned that she was having trouble finding fellow collectors to trade with. He came to Wesley's rescue by writing the code for what would one day become eBay. The domain name ebay.com was registered in August 1995, the beginning of the largest online person-to-person trading community.

Amazon
Amazon, launched in Seattle by Jeffrey Bezos, was the first online bookstore and now the world's largest online-only retailer. Amazon's initial business plan was unusual in that the company did not expect to turn a profit for four to five years after it was founded. In retrospect the strategy was sound, despite the dotcom collapse of 2000.

Netscape
Marc Andreessen, the mastermind of Mosaic, founded his own company, Mosaic Communications Corporation, which is now known as Netscape. Netscape took a 70% market share of the browser market virtually overnight.

RealAudio
Rob Glaser released RealAudio, the first Internet audio streaming software. This was later followed by RealVideo and RealPlayer.

Domain Fees
In 1995, a $50 annual fee was imposed on domains, excluding .edu and .gov domains, which were still funded by the NSF. NSF announced that it would no longer allow direct access to the NSF backbone and contracted with four companies that would provide access to the NSF Backbone for a fee.