How many websites do you think exist? Your guess won't come close

Employees work in front of their computers at the Vente-Privee.com company's headquarters in Saint-Denis near Paris October 24, 2013. REUTERS/Charles Platiau   (FRANCE - Tags: BUSINESS) - PM1E9AO15J301

World wide web hardly does it justice. Image: REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Martin Armstrong
Data Journalist, Statista
Share:
The Big Picture
Explore and monitor how Internet of Things is affecting economies, industries and global issues
A hand holding a looking glass by a lake
Crowdsource Innovation
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:

Internet of Things

On 6 August 1991, British physicist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland published the first ever website, the WorldWideWeb (W3). By the end of 1992 there were ten websites online and, after CERN made the W3 technology publicly available on a royalty-free basis in 1993, the internet gradually started to grow into the all-encompassing giant that it is today.

By 1994, there were close to 3 thousand sites, one of which was a fledgling Yahoo! which, originally called 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web', started its online life as a web directory. By the time Google came onto the scene there were over two million websites. As our infographic shows, today there are 1.71 billion, and looking at Internet Live Stats' counter, despite being lower than 2017's 1.76 billion, this figure is currently increasing at a fast rate.

Image: Statista
Have you read?
Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

Sign up for free

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Share:
World Economic Forum logo
Global Agenda

The Agenda Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

Subscribe today

You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.

About us

Engage with us

  • Sign in
  • Partner with us
  • Become a member
  • Sign up for our press releases
  • Subscribe to our newsletters
  • Contact us

Quick links

Language editions

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

Sitemap

© 2024 World Economic Forum