World Wide Web@20

March 2009: 20 years of the web

Twenty years ago this month, something happened at CERN that would change the world forever: Tim Berners-Lee handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall entitled "Information Management : a Proposal". "Vague, but exciting" is how Mike described it, and he gave Tim the nod to take his proposal forward. The following year, the World Wide Web was born. This week, it's a pleasure and an honour for us to welcome the Web's inventor back to CERN to mark this special anniversary at the place the Web was born.

The celebration

A celebration was held in the Globe on the afternoon of the 13th March to bring together those who created the web at CERN. The event included short presentations from Web veterans, a keynote speech from Tim Berners-Lee, a demonstration of the original browser on the NeXT computer, and a series of presentations from people that Tim believes are doing exciting things with the Web today.

• Press release: CERN celebrates 20^th anniversary of World Wide Web
• Watch the video of the celebrations on the CERN Document Server (CDS) - includes download and alternate player options.

Where the web was born

More information on the beginnings of the web at CERN can be found in the following sites:

• CERN - where the web was born
• The first ever web server: http://info.cern.ch/

Official Google Blog: Google's newest venture

Google's newest venture

Today Google is excited to announce Google Ventures, Google's new venture capital fund. This is Google's effort to take advantage of their resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. By borrowing the best practices of top-tier, financially focused venture capital firms and bringing to bear Google's unique technical expertise and brand, Google thinks they can find young companies with truly awesome potential and encourage their development into successful businesses.

At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. Google will be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas Google hasn't thought of yet. Central to Google's effort will be their fellow Googlers, whom they view as a critically important resource to help educate them about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, Google thinks the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and Google will be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see Google's website at www.google.com/ventures.