Birth of computer communication. A team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) sends the first computer message to a team at the Stanford Research Institute. This brings about the ARPAnet, a project funded by the Advance Research Projects Agency(ARPA) and the precursor to today's internet. The ARPAnet was intended as a network to allow researchers at selected centers to link up with each other's computers. The first computers on the ARPAnet were UCLA, Stanford, UCSB, and the University of Utah, in that order. 

Ray Tomlinson (BBN) creates the first email program for ARPAnet. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning. 

The ARPAnet comes to a complete halt when the first computer virus is accidently propagated around the net. The virus was an email virus affecting the message status of the infected computer. 

ARPAnet splits in two, becoming ARPAnet and MILnet. The number of hosts breaks 1000 globaly and Domian Name System (DNS) introduced. With DNS users do not have to remember the numeric IP address of a computer on the net but can use words to identify a computer. 

The Internet Worm computer virus is released affecting 6,000 computers on the net. The number of total hosts on the net reaches 10,000 later that year. 

ARPAnet is decomissioned and ceases to exist.

Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a global hypertext system dubbed the World Wide Web.

The World comes on-line, becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access. Archie, the first Internet search engine is developed at McGill University in Montreal.

 

The World Wide Web (WWW) is released by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee is head developer. 

The number of hosts in the net breaks 1,000,000. The world bank, white house, and the UN come online. Buisness and the media begin to take notice of the Internet. Mosaic, a web browser, becomes the most used tool to "surf the web". 

Shopping malls on the Internet become popular as buisness online rapidly grows. A number of net related compaines go public, such as Netscape (August 9, 1995). Sun launches Java, and search engines become popular. 

E-bay is founded by Pierre Omidyer. Business derived by chance conversation about how to find people that want to sell their Pez candy dispensers. 

E-Bay goes public for the first time on Nasdaq on September 24, 1998, and it's share and stock triple on that same day. 

Currently eBay is host to about 2.6 million auctions each day. EBay users exchanged more than $500 million of merchandise last year. It is estimated that one in twenty packages sent between private individuals via the post office is a purchase made on eBay. 

Amazon.com, formaly a book aution buissness, announces thta it will enter the on-line auction buissness. They go head to head with E-Bay and are now in E-bay's major competitor. 

A 13 yr. old New Jersey teen bids more than $2.5 million on E-Bay. The teenager had his parents password and bid on eleven different items such as a corvette, doctor's office, and a real viking ship before being caught and logged off permanently. 

E-bay has a 22 hour outage due to database server problems. E-bay refunded all fees and extended dates by two days. In one day E-bay loses $3-$5 million. 

E-Bay announced to it's costomers that they would charge $1.00 for reserve auction items. Costomers responded by flooding E-Bay's chat rooms with complaints. In responce, E-bay dropped the price to $0.50 per transaction. 

A human kidney is auctioned on E-bay for $5,750,100. Bid started for $25,000 and was removed because it is illegal to sell human organs in the U.S. There are about 42907 patiens on the list for kidney transplants and the wait is about 3yrs.