The Internet's Evolution

I still remember when Yahoo!, Excite, and Netscape were all prominent names in Internet. It's so interesting to see the evolution of what has now become the Internet as we know it today.

These videos are very informative, but I must say the reporter is quite annoying. The common themes of both videos is that Stanford University was a source for the beginning of some of the most successful and even not-so successful start-ups. Col

lege students who have the desire to make the Internet useful is what has made it become the go-to avenue for getting information. One of the most common themes is that all these developments were made without any idea that it would become a lucrative business in the future.

Search

I found it funny that one of the first, if not the first, search engine was called Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web, later to be called Yahoo! It's also not surprising that advertising has fueled the development of the Internet as a viable medium for getting information and making money. After Yahoo! and other companies started, Google entered the arena and changed the search engine stagnatio

n that was putting search engines into money-hungry websites that would rather give you a sight that would sell you something rather than what you really wanted. Why did they think that would be sustainable? I don't think I even remember what Overture was, but app

arently it led to Google's new methods for being the top search engine tool in the world.

People Power

Wikipedia, Craigslist, blogging - where did it all come from?

Who's making money off of that? The creator of the web was created so that big business would never be able to control it. I love that idea. It's so common and prevalent. Advertising rears its ugly face everywhere you turn. But the big Internet start ups, even the failed

ones didn't start out with a business model and a hope for a billion-dollar company.

Digg started the idea that users could decide what was the best content. Facebook created a mechanism to visualize your own network of friends. Myspace and Facebook were the two biggest names in social networking for a long time. Now Google+ has joined the arena, all over the idea that the normal, everyday person is the master of the power of the Internet.

Napster created a music revolution that led to a series of law suits in defense of music artists and record companies who were losing money to peopl

e just helping other people out (a euphemism for file sharing). Copyright laws became the enemy of the way people liked to share what they enjoyed. YouTube became the enemy of broadcast television and traditional media.

All of this just goes to show how fast our world is changing. The major concerns now are how much privacy we have. What is this going to do to how much we can keep private with the Internet around? I "Google" myself all the time just to see what comes up. The Internet now has become a place to build a personal brand and is revolutionizing the way that we function in everyday life.