Today marks an important day in Internet history. April 30, 1993, was the day the World Wide Web entered the public domain, which allowed the rest of us to use it on a royalty-free basis.

Want to see the first ever web page?

Not much to look at by today’s standards, but still very cool.

Apart from providing us all with animated cat gifs from now until the end of time, this is also an important milestone for e-books and e-reading. Without the Internet, we wouldn’t have had Project Gutenberg in its easy to search and access format. (Project Gutenberg began in 1971, long pre-dating the Internet.)

We wouldn’t have had Peanut Press, which was the first e-book store and started sometime in 1998, I believe. I couldn’t find the exact date in a quick Google search. If anyone knows the exact date, I’d appreciate you mentioning it in the comments.

Of course, we wouldn’t have Google Search either. Google began in 1996, just three years after the Web entered the public domain. I still wonder how I lived without Google Search, Wikipedia and all those other things we take for granted today.

It sure seems like this Internet thing has been around for more than 20 years (less than half my life). That’s an indication of how much it’s become a part of our daily lives.

Take a moment today and reflect on how the World Wide Web has changed your life. Especially while you read an e-book today.

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