January 1996 – Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin work on a search engine called BackRub, name for its unique ability to analyze back-links pointing to a given website. We’ll here about it again, two years later, and still hearing.

March 1996
– Polaroid’s first 1 megapixel digicam hits. Pricetag: a cool $3,695.
Meanwhile Digital Associated Press cameras send Super Bowl pix to
newspapers in minutes

April 1996 – Yahoo! goes public and
raises $35 million, as shares triple in the first day of trading.
Market capitalization hits $1 billion. In three years its market value
will be $70 billion.

1996
is the year Microsoft launches the web attack with the oppening of its
web-based email, hotmail.com. More than that, the browsers war begins
as Netscape’s share of market peaks at 87 percent, while the newly
launched Internet Explorer 3 begins its climb from 4 percent.

December 1996 – EBay’s AuctionWeb recevie its millionth bid and shortens its name to just eBay

The
Supreme Court’s rejection of the Communcation Decency Act defined the
Internet as we know it today. Until that ruling, no one knew if the
medium would be a limitless, unfiltered universe, or a
government-regulated entity like television and radio.

In other news:

• More that 100.000 World Wide Web sites and growing fast
• 82 percent of americans heve heard of web, up from 45 percent in 1995
• 45 million internet users, including 30 million in US
• optical fiber cable line stretches across Pacific
• 28% of US public libraries offer Internet access
• several large newspapersoffers Web access to their archives
• Wolrd Exposition is a world’s fair held on the Internet