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In the 20 or so years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee conceived of and launched the World Wide Web, a lot has changed. The Web itself has certainly had one of the most profound impacts on the world of any new technology in the past hundred years, easily ranking up there with the standardized assembly line, the communications satellite, and the airplane as one of the century’s most important inventions.
Innovations in Web technology since then have continued to improve the way we communicate with each other. Here are ten of the most profound Web tech innovations that have changed our lives for the better.
1. Web Browsers
The Web browser is arguably the most important part of the entire Internet experience, and without one, the Web experience would likely be very boring and gray. Browsers, which allow users to retrieve information from the Web, have come a long way since the first one was released in 1991. Browsers went mainstream a few years later with Mosaic in 1993, which was followed by Netscape Navigator in 1994, and Microsoft Internet Explorer in 1995, a browser that Microsoft gave away for free, touching off the infamous Web browser wars of the 1990s.
Modern browsers are headlined by four main competitors: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the open source Mozilla Firefox, a browser that essentially replaced Netscape and has so far done the best job of eating into Microsoft’s market share monopoly, Apple’s Safari, and the newest entrant, Google’s open source Chrome browser.
Web browsers mediate the connection between our computers and those that serve the Web pages and Web applications we use and enjoy every day. Without these important software innovations, the World Wide Web would be a very different experience.
2. Search Engines
Of course, being able to see and interact with Web pages is only useful if you can find them. That’s where search engines come in. Most people probably don’t remember the first search engines — such as Archie, Veronica, and Jughead — I know I don’t. But starting in the mid-90s a slew of search engines and searchable Web directories launched that many of you likely do remember. WebCrawler, Infoseek, Lycos, AltaVista, Megellan, Yahoo!, Excite, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, and more provided ways for early Web users to find information.
Then in 1998, Google launched, with the lofty goals of indexing more of the Web than any search engine before it, and organizing all of the world’s information — including information beyond the scope of the Web. Very quickly, Google became the dominant search engine on the Internet, and perhaps more importantly, they were also the first to figure out how to really successfully monetize search results and transform Web search into a multi-billion dollar business.
Search is still the main way that users find information on the Web, and today’s search landscape is very much a three-horse race between Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s recently launched Bing search engine, though Google’s lead is a couple of furlongs.
3. VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a technology for transmitting voice communications over IP networks like the Internet. It’s certainly not a new technology — the first IEEE paper describing the basic ideas behind the system appeared in the 1970s — but it has recently become a mainstream technology thanks in large part to the biggest name in VoIP: Skype.
Skype allows its over 520 million users to make free or very cheap calls around the globe, with traditionally expensive features, such as caller ID, call waiting, and conference calling all built-in. The cost savings and ease-of-use of VoIP platforms like Skype (which also offers text and video chat) have changed the way we communicate with one another.
4. RSS
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has quite simply changed how we consume content on the Web. Essentially, RSS is a technology that let’s Web sites push updates — such as new blog posts or news articles — directly to a user, who can read those updates using a special RSS feed reader (which can either be desktop or Web-based). Rather than forcing users to visit a Web site to check for new updates, the Web site can instead push the updates to them (though technically, the client software still needs to pull RSS feed data, unless another push technology is being used, but the result for the end user is still the same).
RSS has revolutionized how people interact with content by allowing them to become passive consumers of massive amounts of information. Further, it has allowed Web developers to mash up news coverage in new and exciting ways. Sites like Regator and Techmeme use RSS feeds to enhance the way readers find and consume the news.
5. The Real-Time Stream
Real-time has been one of the biggest buzzwords of 2009, and with good reason: it is literally creating a paradigm shift in the way we share information with each other. Real-time status update platforms like Twitter and Facebook allow users to exchange ideas and media almost instantly.
That’s changing the way we find information on the Web, shifting at least some content discovery from search to real-time interactions. It’s such a big deal that search engines have begun integrating real-time information into search results, so that people can get the best of both worlds. Real-time search pairs organized, algorithmic search of mostly static content with the absolute freshest, more up-to-date information being shared or created on social platforms and blogs.
In other words, the real-time stream is improving the way we communicate and spread news by making information instantly available.
6. Peer-to-Peer
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology is a distributed network architecture that allows data to be spread from computer to computer without a central node. One of the major advantages of this type of setup is that as more people log on and use the network, they add their resources (like bandwidth), so the network scales automatically as demand increases — meaning that the more people using a P2P network, the faster it generally becomes.
The idea rose to mainstream prominence in 1999 with the launch of Napster, a P2P software product that allowed people to trade MP3 music files with one another. Though the service was eventually litigated out of business by the music industry, it arguably changed the way music — and later movies and other types of media — are distributed, and paved the way for the success of MP3 players like the iPod and legitimate online music stores like iTunes. Indeed, it can be argued that without P2P networks making the idea of trading MP3 files and movies over the Internet commonplace, legitimate services that allow us to do things like stream multimedia content and store entire music libraries on our cell phones might have never been made.
Today, P2P traffic accounts for anywhere from 27-55 percent of all Internet traffic (depending on location), and popular peer-to-peer protocols, such as BitTorrent, continue to influence everything from music and film distribution to network architecture and Internet legislation.
7. AJAX
AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a set of Web development technologies that allow Web applications (Web sites) to poll the server for new information without reloading the page. That sounds boring on the surface, but it made a whole new generation of Web-based applications possible and enabled developers to bring more desktop-like functionality to the Web.
AJAX makes possible applications like Google Docs, Meebo, Google Maps, and Picnik. Each of those applications use AJAX technologies to update your current page — with things like new messages, new maps, new image or text edits, etc. — without the need to reload. The result is a more desktop-like experience in the browser and more useful Web-based applications.
8. Software as a Service
Though the concept for Software as a Service (SaaS) applications dates back to at least the late 1990s, it has begun to catch on at the consumer level more broadly over the past couple of years, thanks in large part to AJAX-powered rich Internet applications. The general idea behind SaaS is that software is provided on demand over the Web and data is stored in the “cloud” — another buzzword that, for users, essentially means that user data is stored on the computing infrastructure for the service (think: a series of networked servers), rather than on the user’s own machine.
The main advantages of using SaaS applications for end-users are that the software can be accessed from any Web-connected computer, and perhaps more importantly, so can the data. The idea is certainly not without potential pitfalls — if the software service in question goes down, users are left without access to their important data (for example, SaaS email service Gmail has suffered numerous outages this year).
However, the benefits of always on, accessible from anywhere computing have made Software as a Service and cloud-computing extremely attractive to both consumers and enterprise users. When combined with Web-connected desktop applications (such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic for Twitter), SaaS appears to be the future of software distribution.
9. E-commerce
When the World Wide Web was first conceived as a system for sharing information, who knew people would some day use it to spend an estimated $329 billion per year on retail? Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, has indeed changed how we buy things.
The banner year in the history of e-commerce was undoubtedly 1995, which saw the launch of both Amazon.com and Ebay, two sites that would come to define the Web in the 1990s and continue to be leading sellers and brokers of goods online. Today, if you can buy it, you can buy it online, and Web-based selling has revolutionized how just about every industry does business.
One of those industries in which e-commerce really shines is travel. It used to be that the only way to access booking systems for airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies was to either call them directly and comparison shop by phone — a painful and time-consuming prospect — or go through a travel agent, which introduced an additional cost.
Online booking systems and price comparison engines have greatly simplified the process, however. Now, with just a few clicks, we can not only find the best prices for travel, but also book our flight, hotel room, or rental car without the need for a middleman.
10. Wi-Fi
Remember when you had to plug your computer (or computer’s modem) into the wall in order to access the Internet? I do. Thanks to Wi-Fi, though, even though your modem still needs to be connected via wires, your computer doesn’t. Wireless Internet access makes laptops and other Web-connected devices infinitely more useful because they can be used from anywhere within range of the wireless access point (the Wi-Fi router that is plugged into the wall).
And in some places, thanks to municipal wireless networks, and new technologies such as WiMAX and cellular data networks, you may not need anything to be plugged into the wall to access the Web.
Being able to take the Web with us without the need for wires has definitely made our lives better. What other Web technologies have made your life easier, simpler, or otherwise improved? Let us know in the comments.
Series supported by Times Reader 2.0
This series is supported by Times Reader 2.0. Learn more about The New York Times’ latest innovation in newspaper delivery here.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, angelhell, alexsl
Reviews: Amazon.com, Bing, Chrome, Facebook, Firefox, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, Google Maps, Internet Explorer, Meebo, Real-Time Jobs, Seesmic, Skype, TweetDeck, Twitter, Yahoo!, eBay, iStockphoto, picnik
Tags: history, innovations, List, Lists, social media, times reader series, web technology
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