25 Things That Rocked The Internet

What did you do before the Internet? For the younger generation it's hard to imagine what life would be without it. Yet somehow, generations before us managed just fine without email, social networks, online shopping, and search engines. I'm not exactly sure what they did for fun, but whatever it was, I bet it involved more time outside the house. 

USA Today is turning 25 this year, and to celebrate they're revisiting the past 25 years by creating 25 lists starting with a  list that covers the Top 25 Things that Have Changed the Internet. First up is the World Wide Web.

Although the Internet had been in the works since the early 60's, mainly for government use, it was until the early 90's that it went fully commercial thanks to independent online services. Around the same time, on May 1990 Tim Berners-Lee settled on the name World Wide Web, and set up the first website ever at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. You can read all about the World Wide Web's history here.

The list includes most of the big players starting with AOL who's responsible for turning people on to Web portals, Google "who perfected how we find info on the Web," and Yahoo! who remains a favorite web portal thanks to its many user-friendly services.

Internet Explorer isn't on the list, but Mosaic/Netscape couldn't be left out since it was the first widely-used multimedia Web browser. As far as shopping goes, eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist made the list.

On a general note, things like broadband, Wi-Fi, instant messaging, GUI, spam, porn, and online mapping also made it on the list. And just to prove the young still rule the Internet, the list wouldn't be complete without the inclusion of hip destinations such as Napster, YouTube, Virtual Gaming, and MySpace.

What companies do you think should've been added to the list?

Turning Old Computers into Big Money