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History / selected events
A chronological index of events cited in the era narratives. Follow each event back to its chapter for context.
ARPANET's first message is sent from UCLA to SRI
Ray Tomlinson implements network email, using `@` to separate user and host
Cerf and Kahn publish the TCP paper “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication”
RFC 791 (IP) and RFC 793 (TCP) are published
ARPANET fully switches over to TCP/IP
RFC 882/883 propose DNS
NSFNET is built, becoming the backbone of the academic internet
The Morris worm breaks out, and CERT/CC is founded shortly after
Tim Berners-Lee submits the World Wide Web proposal at CERN
The World Wide Web project is made public
Linus Torvalds announces Linux
CERN places the World Wide Web software in the public domain; the NCSA Mosaic browser is released the same year
The W3C is established
Netscape Navigator 1.0 is released
Netscape and Sun announce JavaScript
The W3C releases the CSS1 recommendation
Google is founded
The CIH virus triggers a large-scale outbreak
The Nasdaq index peaks and the internet bubble begins to burst
Amazon opens as an online bookstore
eBay is founded as AuctionWeb
Wikipedia launches
The Manifesto for Agile Software Development is published
The Code Red worm breaks out
Google publishes the GFS paper
The first Web 2.0 Conference; the term "Web 2.0" catches on
Alipay begins operating independently; the same month Google publishes the MapReduce paper
Jesse James Garrett publishes an article coining the term Ajax
jQuery is released
AWS launches S3 and EC2 (beta)
Hadoop becomes an independent open-source project
Apple unveils the iPhone
The Administrative Measures for Information Security Multi-Level Protection are issued
Apple's App Store launches
Google Chrome is released; the V8 engine greatly improves JS performance
The first Android phone, the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1), is released
Facebook launches from a Harvard dorm room
YouTube launches
Twitter launches
Ethan Marcotte proposes "responsive web design"
AlexNet wins the ImageNet competition, a deep-learning breakthrough
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issues the Decision on Strengthening the Protection of Online Information
Docker is open-sourced
Snowden discloses US mass-surveillance programs
The Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization is established
The "Heartbleed" vulnerability is disclosed
Amendment (IX) to the Criminal Law is passed
Google open-sources TensorFlow
The first commercial LTE network opens in Stockholm and Oslo
Instagram launches on iOS
AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol 4:1
The Cybersecurity Law was passed (in effect 2017-06-01)
The WannaCry ransomware outbreak
"Attention Is All You Need" was published, introducing the Transformer
The Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities were disclosed
The EU's GDPR began to apply
The MLPS 2.0 national standards took effect
The GPT-3 paper was published
The Data Security Law and the Personal Information Protection Law were passed
The Log4Shell vulnerability was disclosed
The Provisions on the Administration of Algorithmic Recommendation of Internet Information Services took effect
OpenAI released ChatGPT
The EU Digital Services Act is adopted
The Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis of Internet Information Services took effect
Meta released LLaMA, starting the open-source large model wave
OpenAI released GPT-4
The Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services were issued (in effect 2023-08-15)
The first batch of domestic large models passed filing and opened to the public
The National Data Administration was unveiled
OpenAI released the Sora video generation model
The xz Utils backdoor was discovered
A CrowdStrike update triggered a global outage
The EU's Artificial Intelligence Act entered into force
Anthropic released the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The Regulations on the Administration of Network Data Security took effect
The second 2024 revision of the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services took effect
DeepSeek-R1 was released, an open-source reasoning model that sharply lowered costs
The Measures for Labeling AI-Generated and Synthetic Content took effect
The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the decision to amend the Cybersecurity Law (in effect 2026-01-01)
The EU's Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 entered into force, amending the Artificial Intelligence Act