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weaving the web

Robert debated with himself for only a moment. There was honor and pride at stake here, but also the future direction of the Web. The conference was the way to tell everyone that no one should control it, and that a consortium could help parties agree on how to work together while also actually withstanding any effort by any institution or company to "control" things. Feeling that perhaps NCSA was again trying to beat us to the punch, Robert told Hardin, "Well, if you had planned your conference so long ago then you certainly would have told us about it by now. So, sorry, we intend to go forward with ours." He pointed out that we had already booked the space and had passed the point of no return. NCSA decided to hold a second WWW conference in Chicago in November.

As 1994 unfolded, more signs emerged that the general public was beginning to embrace the Web. Merit Inc., which ran the Internet backbone for the National Science Foundation, measured the relative use of different protocols over the Internet. In March 1993, Web connections had accounted for 0.1 percent of Internet traffic. This had risen to 1 percent by September, and 2.5 percent by December. Such growth was unprecedented in Internet circles.

In January, O'Reilly had announced a product dubbed "Internet in a Box," which would bring the Internet and Web into homes. It was already possible for anyone to download, free, all the browsers, TCP/IP, and software needed to get on the Internet and Web, but a user had to know a lot about how to configure them and make them work together, which was complicated. Neither the Internet nor the Web had initially been set up for home or individual business use; they were meant for universities, researchers, and larger organizations. O'Reilly's product put it all together. All a user had to do was install it on his computer, and pay phone charges for his connection to the Internet.

Soon thereafter, however, many Internet service providers started to spring up—local companies that would give access to