YouTube Transcript:
Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet: Part 3 - Wiring the World

Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.

AutoDub

Understand YouTube Foreign Videos

Immersive YouTube Voice Translation

Break language barriers, embrace global quality content

Solve Foreign Video Barriers Instantly

Video Transcript

funding for this program has been

provided by the annual financial support

of viewers like you

remember excite by March 1997 after

three years they've gone from hacking

code in a garage to become an Internet

media company revenues from advertising

into the million and they've outgrown

office number three and time for another

move three years ago we visited with six

kids in a garage working on their dream

starting with eighteen thousand dollars

in a bag of brown rice

they built excite into a company with

two hundred workers worth a quarter of a

billion dollars and this is just the

start it has to be because in the world

of internet business the rule is grow or

die we move from the garage to the

dining room we move from the dining room

to an office at 5,000 square feet we

move from that office to this office

about 12,000 square feet and now we're

moving to our final resting place

I wouldn't even guess that we would have

moved into the Garcia office that we

that we were at 2,000 square foot office

with little dingy cubes so that was a

step up for us and then to move in here

and then to move into our very own

[Music] [Applause]

Excite is visible proof of the

Internet's astonishing progress its

growth mirrors the expansion of the

wired world in four years the number of

Americans using the Internet has risen

from five million to 62 million traffic

on the Internet is doubling every 100

days and the funds only just begun only

two years into this huge revolution

called the commercial use of the

Internet only two years I think where

other industries were just two years

into their lives I think where cars were

2 years and automobiles oh they were

terrible I mean bicycle wheels a tiller

for the steering wheel a motor that took

you at five miles an hour and died in

about a half a mile if you look back in

history past the scope of this program

past 1970 past 1900 back to when we were

human beings in small tribes hunting and

gathering everybody you had a deal with

was somebody you saw every day and we're

a species that's based on communication

with our entire tribe and one thing that

modern communication does is make it

possible again for us to communicate

with anybody in the world

unlike the PC it levers the top-line it

helps us entertain and inform and

educate and inspire and sell and make

community you even make meaning out of

life and out of death and that's a far

more powerful dynamic than cranking out

memos and doing financial analyses with

a spreadsheet

think of this as just a few milliseconds

after the Big Bang I mean we only barely

discern the fundamental laws of physics

what better place were a big bang

concerned the European laboratory for

particle research believe it or not this

is where the explosive growth of the

internet began here in Geneva

Switzerland the next great internet

breakthrough the world wide web was

created by an English programmer to make

there was always different sorts of

people from different countries who

brought different sorts of computing

equipment and so CERN was at the

forefront of making gateways for file

transfer exchange that you get files

from different some computer email

exchange so that you could get email

from the proprietary systems to cross

borders and go into another proprietary

system and although I wasn't involved

with that that was the spirt there was a

lot of networking despite all this

networking there was no simple way for

CERN scientists to retrieve information

from each other's computers in fact it

was exactly like the internet on a small

scale obvious forever

what I'm trying to draw here is a

hundred and sixty thousand computers in

800 different networks all running

different operating systems different

programming languages it's a mess and

that was the situation faced by Tim

berners-lee he wanted to find a way to

get information from this computer over

here to this user over here and the

question was how to get it in fact it

was basically technically trivial to go

and get it it just happened that you had

to be a guru of the highest degree to

actually be able to navigate all the

networks and figure out all the programs

that you would come across on your way

and know that what commands to give them

to actually get the data back and the

chances I went to get it back you

wouldn't be able to actually read it

anyway because overlay incompatibilities

started in October writing a program

called which I called World Wide Web

where you're reading something you could

if it's interesting and you've got right

access to it you could just highlight a

phrase hit hotkey ctrl shift in and it

would bring up a another window Tim

berners-lee's greatest achievement may

have been giving an address to every bit

of information on the Internet you've

seen these things

ww cringe lee calm that's my webpage and

this is the address called a universal

resource locator forget about that the

important thing is that you don't have

to know about names of files you don't

have to know where this is you just have

to remember cringe lucam and you're

there by inventing HTTP

or hypertext Transfer Protocol Tim

figured out how to embed an address

under any word or picture you like and

then when you click on that word or icon

you automatically jump through the

internet to save the cringe lee domain

there's a website for sore eyes the

power of a hypertext link is that it can

leak to absolutely anything that's the

fundamental concept fundamental idea was

anything which was out there somewhere

sitting on a computer disk where that

computer was attached to a network you

ought to be able to give it an address

you ought to be able to make a link to

it the key insight that I think I credit

Tim berners-lee with is the URL the idea

there's a Uniform Resource locator that

says I can point at any particular bit

of information on the Internet

if I mean that you should go to this

country this University look in their

FTP archive look in their file archives

and download this picture of a Corvette

and put it up on the screen I now have a

way of doing that so that's why the

characters HTTP backslash WW have become

as familiar as coca-cola in fact Tim's

idea wasn't new 20 years earlier

computer visionary Ted Nelson author of

the seminal hacker work computer lib had

proposed a global network he called it

Xanadu a magic place of literary memory

after Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan in

Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately

pleasure-dome decree where alph the

sacred River ran through caverns

measureless to man down to a sacred sea

Xanadu was measureless - it involves

storing all the world's literature on

databases and accessing it through links

which Ted called hypertext with an

automatic system for paying royalties to

authors whose work was used but like

Coleridge's vision Nelson Xanadu never

saw the light of day but Tim's invention

did and the World Wide Web turned a

network for geeks into something

everyone could use though not everyone's

pleased Tim berners-lee figured out that

the key was extreme simplicity and

that's very painful to me because of

course now the Webster's are trying to

grapple with all the issues we were

trying to solve in a single design of

beginning and the world wide web was

pretty awful I mean I I I dearly love

Tim berners-lee and I think he's a great

guy and a wonderful idealist and has it

just achieves wonderful things but the

the unfortunate thing about the World

Wide Web is just how how messed up it is

perhaps it's sour grapes but at least

Ted Nelson can claim the creation of

hypertext but does he Hypertech is

obvious so I do not claim to have

invented hypertext I really discovered

it and it's like the telephone now the

telephone at the time seemed to be an

event in invention to us now it was a

discovery because it's obvious

okay so hypertext is like that to me was

simply the obvious next step of

literature what is hypertext hypertext

is known secuence giving excuse me to

Ted I must get back to the World Wide Web

Web

Tim's solution for the world's particle

physicists turned out to be a solution

for everyone helping to network in

compatible computers CERN wasn't in the

internet business but in 1991 they

published the code and within four years

the World Wide Web

sending more packets than any other

internet service they took the bit bits

and pieces that existed and figured out

a way to put them together and make it

work it was a tour de force the people

who did the world wide web were really

willing to take existing pieces of

things in god-awful condition in some

cases and figure out a way to make it

work and the World Wide Web people

deserve a lot of credit for what they

did I mean what they did was very difficult

why would success precisely because it

is not a monolithic new software product

you don't get web 9.0 in the mail on

cd-rom the web is a collection of a

whole bunch of small technologies that

fit together because a couple a couple

dozen people all thought about how

they'd work together cool and they're

all being evolved constantly in real

time by thousands of people around the

world and there isn't any central

release you can't go anywhere to go buy

in fact the world wide web did work I

find this job just exciting for yourself

but exciting for the whole idea that you

can have an idea you know some idea and

it can take off and it can happen it

means that the dream is all over the

world you should take heart and not stop

the web was a huge step toward wiring

the world but more changes were to come

one of these happened far from CERN and

far from Silicon Valley - it happened

here US government money made possible

the ARPANET and the internet but there

was a catch there was no commerce

allowed on the net when this restriction

was finally lifted it wasn't Bill Gates

or any of the other digital Titans who

turned the internet into a commercial

marketplace no it was the folks on the

hill the custodians of capitalism it was

Uncle Sam roll the drums and sound the

trumpets for the congressman from

Virginia's fightin 9th district the

Honorable Rick voucher who in 1992

amended a law here are the historic

words which made all the difference

this future ubiquitous network for voice

video and data communications of all

kinds will connect homes schools and

workplaces it will constitute an

essential ingredient for our future

economic competitiveness and will open

new worlds of information and services

for all of the nation's citizens this is

Congress speak for you may now buy and

sell things on the net what made it easy

to do so with one more software

breakthrough time for another word from

the cringe Lea glossary of geek this

word is browser it doesn't sound like

much kind of a laid back word but

there's nothing relaxed about the

browser because it changed the face of

the internet here's how the internet

looked in the 1980s lists of text this

is Stanford University but you'd hardly

know it from looking it's not very user

friendly it's actually hard to find what

you want and frankly it was mainly a

tool for nerds and then came this an

attractive easy-to-use shop window a

gateway to the riches of the internet

this is a browser and just as the Mac

made a PC into a computer my mother

could love the browser opened up the

internet to everyone

it was not at Stanford but on a

Midwestern campus that the second great

innovation of nineties internet

technology took place here a bright kid

named Marc Andreessen was earning

minimum wage at nights writing code in a

super computer center at the University

of Illinois his prototype browser was a

piece of software called mosaic we ended

up sort of in the middle of the night

starting this project that we called

mosaic what we were trying to do was

just put sort of a human face on the

Internet the Internet at that point was

a tool for researchers of scientists for

years Bill joy had been telling me that

someday we'd back at 21 year old kid who

would write software that would change

the world and lo and behold sitting in

my offices this 23 year old I'm not a

kid I mean he's a very mature hulking

shi young executive and Mark said the

software's gonna change everything for

me this whole thing started exploding

with the invention of the browser

you know mosaic because suddenly the

internet was accessible to the average

person through this rich graphical

interface you didn't have to know these

arcane protocols it didn't have to be a

nerd anymore to access the Internet

mosaic put a face to the web and mosaic

plus the web then finally gave us a way

to express to the non-technical person

what all of us in computing knew was the

tremendous value of having networks

interconnected and now everyone's a web

head and everyone's excited about the

web those ideas we've been present for

twenty years but it took a killer

application clearly mosaic marks mosaic

browsers spread across the internet like

wildfire it brought him to the attention

of an ex Stanford professor who had

already made millions from one startup

and felt like doing another Jim Clark I

said look if you can if you can recruit

all the guys every single guy who helps

you write that program then I'll put my

own money in it and will distort a

company and figure out some way to make

a business out of it

and that's that's exactly what we did I

put three million dollars in we flew out

to University of Illinois four days

later sign them all up

after a brief tussle with Illinois over

the mosaic name Jim and marks new

company became Netscape their product

was a mosaic killer navigator Jim's plan

for the company was well minimalist well

my attitude was if 2025 million people

are on the net today 1 million of them

are using mosaic this was bear in mind

April 94 and we can displace mosaic

there's 24 more million people who would

like product like this presumably and

the market with the size of the net was

doubling roughly every year and a half

so I mean by the time we had our

products in the marketplace it would be

50 million people since you got to be

able to make money with 50 million

people using your product and that was

that was the sum total of the business

plan at that time it didn't take a

rocket science to figure out that there

was a big market here and we had one

meeting with Jim and Mark after that

decided to in dust him and set about on

a crash program of 120 days to hire over

for vice-presidents in a world-class CEO

and get the Netscape product shipped

well web time fortunately you had the

money fortunately I had the opportunity

the money was easy it was knowing the

opportunity and recruiting the people

well in about a year and a half time we

had 65 million users most rapidly

assimilated product in history in other

words no one had ever achieved in a

stall base of 65 million anything in

fact I don't know if anyone had ever

cheat achieved that kind of install base

in anything except perhaps Microsoft and

in 1994 and 95 Netscape was known as the

fastest growing company in the industry

with all the requisite valley attributes

shiny low-rise buildings

Generation X workforce and a parking lot

reserved just for roller hockey today

they're famous for the fact that they're

going head to head with Microsoft the

folks in Illinois did some clever work

early on now that happened to include

Andreessen and you know Netscape got

form but there was some clever work done

at Illinois there's always gonna be some

clever work done someplace that's not

here hopefully there's a lot of clever

work done here too there's always gonna

be some clever work done some place out

and number 2 we had a big thing we had

to get done called Windows 95 and while

we managed to get a browser done and

built-in because we weren't asleep it

didn't get the same kind of passionate

for 100% focus that we love to give

things because we had a lot of that

focus already into doing the basic job

of Windows 95 and so a little bit of

cleverness and a little bit of sort of

other priority was all it took to create

a window that's how dynamic and

competitive this industry is in which

Netscape emerged we also were making

money on it you know that was we our

first full but year of business was

seventy-five million dollars in revenue

and the next year was 375 million we

were until Microsoft kind of came in and

punched us in the face we were the

fastest growing company in history with

his navigator browser dominating the

Internet these were sunny days for mark

and Netscape

thanks to the world wide web in the

browser the internet was transformed

suddenly here was the recipe for

commercial opportunities in cyberspace a

giant feast of digital delights laid out

for anyone with a PC and a modem to

enjoy so how does it work the Internet

is like a giant restaurant you look in a

menu for something that appeals order it

the order goes off somewhere and is

served up by a waiter or waitress

well the Internet's the same way the

individual PC that's ordering the

information is called a client and the

big computer at the end of the line that

provides what the client needs is called

the server these days that often takes

so long perhaps it should be called a

waiter the business of building these

servers is another of the opportunities

created by the internet and serving up

information turns out to be very

the biggest of these information

providers is America online a company

now worth 16 billion dollars even in the

real world of trains planes and

automobiles mean many of us still need a

tour operator to package our travel

founder Steve Case saw a similar

opportunity in the virtual world

offering beginners the internet

experience in an all-in-one package now

this may be a virtual world but it still

needs real hardware

in all this talk of wiring the world

it's easy to forget that someone

actually has to do the job of wiring it

and that's happening here at America on

lines new data center in Virginia where

computers and routers and modems are

going in that are going to give 10

million people access to the Internet

and beyond excuse me the 1982 bought my

first computer and wanted to hook it up

and be part of this this online world

and went to great lengths to make that

happen took many months hundreds of

dollars to get the modem to work with

the software to work with a cable to

work with a computer to actually connect

to this is this this world so it was

very frustrating at the same time I

found it kind of exhilarating that I

actually got it to work and I was able

to access information and talk to people

all around the world from my little

desktop and Wichita Kansas which is

where I was living at the time so I

thought the whole thing was really quite

magical and the companies that are

leaders and making that happen and

popularizing that concept for a

mainstream audience I think they're

gonna be very very successful and we'd

like a well to be in this new

interactive world what AT&T was in the

telephone business a hundred years ago

or Microsoft has been more recently in

the the software business there's a big

opportunity here oddly enough Microsoft

wanted to be the Microsoft of the online

market too but for a change

Microsoft didn't succeed the Microsoft

network was our decision to get into the

online service business we thought that

for people at home in particular this

would be explosive and we very much

believe that to this day electronic mail

staying in touch with your friends seen

what's going on in local community

getting up-to-date news and having that

be nicely packaged with chat sessions

and neat new software features we saw a

market for that [Applause]

[Applause]

even I made a foray into this

marketplace back in 1994 Apple Computer

created an online consumer service

called II World one of its notable

attractions was the columnist Robert X

cringe Lee at the time I made this bold

statement so my job on a world is to

create controversy and therefore get a

lot of people talking over the

electronic back fence he world went

belly-up though Apple fights on and me

why do you think I'm schmoozing with the

guy who runs America Online he has 10

million subscribers already but 80% of

Americans aren't liars that's what I'd

there are more users more websites and

more data sources joining the internet

every day

plenty brings its problems the more

places you have to look for information

the harder it is to find what you want

we need help

so people have invented tools for the

job search engine another word invented

for the Internet the World Wide Web is

an enormous collection of database

libraries that hold information rather

than books the problem is how do you

find what you want to know in that mass

of information

well librarians crack that problem years

ago they invented the catalogue rather

than look individually through all those

books I can find what I want by

searching this card catalogue on the

Internet the same thing is accomplished

by a search engine it continually

catalogs and indexes every word in all

those databases so if you want to know

about say the career of Arnold

Schwarzenegger go to the search engine

it searches its index and presto there's

everything you ever wanted to know about

two things are constant in Silicon

Valley is steady consumption of soda and

change excites original product was just

a search engine now they built a

business around it

they changed the company name the

offices change from grungy to glitzy and

in 1995 they became that web phenomenon

and Internet media site a cross between

an electronic newspaper and a cable

network funded by advertising we call

ourselves publishing on steroids so

devoid of print paper Inc we do what a

publisher does or a cable provider does

we aggregate consumers around our

programming and then we sell that

demographic back to advertisers the

different ways to make money in the

internet are just beginning to emerge

for excite the model is a media channel

with content to attract me and

advertising to catch my eye while I'm

there but there are other ways

pay-per-view mail-order shopping of

every kind games auctions and services

with no earthly parallel they're all

putting their faith in a new medium to

deliver the big payoff every time a new

visual medium is invented one

application drives the market this was

true for still photography true for

motion pictures it was especially true

for VCRs

and it's true for the world wide web I'm

talking about sex [Music]

[Music] [Applause]

[Applause]

sex sells but there is a market for it

it's true capitalism if there's a market

for it it will be filled and it's legal

and there's nothing wrong with them in

the beginning of this industry like

other industries people are willing to

pay for adult content the home

videocassette industries is a prime

example initially people were paying

several thousand dollars back in the 70s

for machines to go home and basically

watch adult content as part of this job

of course you have to type is there is

there typing speed requirement no you

know you want to have your nails

manicure and everything and nails do

slip a lot on the keyboard sure but as

long as you just like simple things like

hi how are you babe you know and you

could put are you you don't have me put

the whole word down sure and then most

then old baby does your mom know that

yeah actually she does yeah she's okay

with it you know it's the sixties thing

she's all in that success

oh you've had a hippie mom yeah so it's

it's great now cool would not understand

but then anything with computers mm-hmm

oh honey you're moving up in the world

and computers that computer thing that's

going far that's going far it's futures

and computers so Zanna telling us

computers it's fine it didn't take long

for the advertising industry to notice

the growing number of eyeballs staring

at websites or for website operators to

start selling those eyeballs to the

advertisers in 1999 online advertising

revenue will reach 2 billion dollars and

it's been doubling each year

how about advertising well people say

what a puny number the software industry

only had 300 million dollars in

advertising for that internet support

its internet companies that were

supported by advertising I say like yo a

year before that we had zero now we had

300 this March we had 57 million who

thought we would own advertising

advertising is the most frequent form of

money-making for us and we have enough

people coming to our various online

sites that advertisers are interested

and so that's been for the last two

years the majority of our revenue but

then merchandise as well we have books

we have primers email services we do

free massages as well meet two wise

filiz Tom and Dave Gardner

they are dedicated to the bunking the

Guru's of Wall Street and sharing

financial advice with other net users

the Motley Fool's and archetypal web

service irreverent inclusive and inform

and blowing like crazy from the internet

things change every three months

you just can't possibly prepare if we're

if a typical company grows about 10% a

year we're growing about 15% a month

that means each month feels like a year

and if you saw Dave he was about a foot

and a half taller about a year ago I was

a I was a fetching fella back then the

Motley Fool today is a media company

which is whose mission is to teach

people how to invest their own money we

have six hundred thousand households

come in to the Motley Fool every month

building communities where people can

aggregate ideas let's say we have we put

a hundred thousand people together in a

block they're gonna buy insurance or

they're gonna buy mutual funds if we can

package them together have everyone work

together we're gonna be able to cut

prices significantly and that's the

beauty of going online of being online

you have a voice everyone has their

little publishing house right there in

their home everybody has ideas to share

what makes a good fool a fool is someone

who thinks for herself somebody who is

willing to roll off his sleeves and make

his own decisions one size fits all

actually yeah oh there my reputation precedes

nothing foolish about saving money on

groceries a website called planet you

sends your grocery coupon direct to the

checkout replacing bulk mail and saving

trees all at once the idea came from

hyper nerd Christine come afford the key

concept is eating if you don't eat

you're dead okay so how about taking the

most basic thing we all have to do right

and bringing those packaged goods the

people who promote this salsa whatever

Wheat Thins

okay bringing those people to advertise

on the net because you've got to buy

paper towels anyway the thing is 325

billion coupons are distributed in the

USA annually two percent are redeemed

to pers yes 98 percent all right end up

in the rubbish or in the recycling it is

totally ineffective so once you grab

your plenty of promotions either from a

partner website or from the planet your

website you can then say I want my

promotions mailed to me or I want my

promotions delivered to the store that I

shot that AHA so you can deliver them to

the point-of-sale system you walk in you

identify yourself by swiping whatever

card you set up as your ID all right and

then catching the register receipt has a deduction

deduction [Music]

[Music]

Kerching is right in 1995 there were

27,000 commercial website in 1998 three

quarters of a million 30 times as many

mail-order is becoming email order and

you don't have to dress up to go

shopping in fact you don't have to dress

at all

in terms of infrastructure cost buying

underwear in your underwear is hard to

beat and if you buy the same underwear

you know exactly what the product is you

don't look at em you buy Munsingwear 34s

or whatever you know kangaroo pouch you

know you know twelve pair please mail it

to my house there's this very American

temptation to use the Internet to sell

things but what to sell well everyone on

the net can already read and write so

the first big commercial success is

using digital technology to push that

most analogue of products the printed

word but this is not Guttenberg being

replaced by the World Wide Web

it's Gutenberg enhanced using modern

technology to sell books lots and lots

of books [Music]

[Music]

in the spring of 1984 I came across the

statistic that web usage to ascribe 2300

percent a year and outside of a petri

dish I hadn't seen anything grow that

fast I made a list of 20 different

products that you might be able to sell

online and picked books as the first

best product primarily because there are

so many books there's no way to have a

two and a half million title physical

bookstore the largest physical

bookstores in the world only have about

one hundred and seventy five thousand

titles and there's no way to have a

print catalog if you were to print the

amazon.com catalog to be the size of

more than 40 New York City phone books [Applause]

the basic tree knifes fairly simple

promise ubiquity of that technology and

this looked like because of that growth

rate the first time ever that the basic

technology needed to do electronic

commerce in an acceptable way would be

ubiquitous so it actually turns out that

the ubiquity of the Internet is more

important than the technology of the Internet

[Music] [Applause]

[Applause] [Music]

the Internet is creating the biggest

Californian job boom since the gold rush

and America is running out of homegrown

engineers but the language of the

internet is English so wherever you come

from if you're a decent programmer and

speak English apply here [Music]

[Music]

the sound of leather on willow it's a

cricket game we're not in England we're

in Santa Clara County the most heavily

wired and network community in the world

the valley employs thousands of Indian

born engineers who bring with them not

only their programming skills in their

engineering degrees but also their

cricket balls and bats sunshine and a

field to play is all we ask

since there's this big boom in American

in Silicon Valley here which for a whole

bunch of engineers to come all the way

from India you know we make the big you

know trip up to America to work and then

come here and find out that this cricket

being played India the second largest

country with the number of engineers

after the United States in the whole

world so I think that is a factor in the

second thing is because it's an

english-based system it's a lot easier

for people to come from India and

integrate and do business in the United

States with the arrival of the Internet

companies here can now fill their job

vacancies with skilled Indian engineers

who don't have to leave India could be

I work in the industry with a zero

unemployment you can't get skilled labor

at any place so we're scouring the world

with world market to get programmers to

call either people is astonishing the

loyalty of the people and the work ethic

the quality of their English and

everything just blew us away we just had

a fabulous have a fabulous experience in

Bangalore and we're expanding or off

person that they were very very rapidly [Music]

[Music] [Applause]

[Applause] [Music]

[Music]

for all the outward differences India

Silicon Valley has a lot in common with

my Silicon Valley starting with traffic

jams and construction everywhere the

street signs and billboards are all in

English Bangalore is busy and booming

because of the huge numbers of

programmers Western companies are

putting to work the Internet has become

a worldwide digital communication

network that rivals in size the

telephone system so here we are 12,000

miles 12 time zones away from where I

live in Silicon Valley in California in

Bangalore the Silicon Valley of India

programmers here solve the problems of

users around the world companies founded

here serve customers in Europe and the

United States and it all happens because

so what we have done is to set up the

company here the kind of investment with

you which is here which you are made

with a clear approach to do work in

India leverage those skills develop

those technology skills in India so that

we level it therefore Nowell Nowell

the net wear company from Utah is

constructing a new Indian headquarters

building here 21st century technology

built by pre-industrial labor we work

with GE General Electric almost all the

units of GA a light signals sequent

Xerox partner minister services in Boston

Boston

sundar San Caron is a typical young

programmer in Bangalore sundar offered

to take me to work with him on the back

of his motor scooter apparently every

one of his fellow programmers had

they say that in Bangalore every second

person writes code and everybody honks

at the traffic lights how can you remain

a pastime out here so you didn't tend to

get bored easily hum for some time it

makes you feel nice in India we have a

computer as part of the curriculum now

it's just some +3 grade 3 as you'd call

it so I've been doing some kind of

programming others since +8 when I was

there it was class 8 so once I finished

my bachelor's I got into a non formal

Institute for computer learning and I

started programming programmers in

Bangalore are awake when America is

asleep the Internet has perfected the 24

hour workday you're working when your

customer is sleeping ok to that extent

if it gives you a problem during his

working hours you solve it and send it

back to him by the time he starts

working so I mean it's a great advantage

especially if you're doing things

offshore began a call in the evening

through email saying there's a problem

next year morning when people come to

the u.s. problem is solved while the

customer gets surprised saying well I

just told your father bug in evening how

come in the morning you guys solved it

now the problem is solving other part of

the wall by really using this 24-hour

turbine cycle it's not only cricket the

British Empire gave India it also made

English the language of government and

higher education which gives Indian

engineers another great advantage

people here know English unlike Japan or

China and places like that people know

English you know so that is a lingua

franca of Reynosa software you have to

know English [Music]

[Music]

my kids study in our English medium

school they cannot read or write my own

own mother tongue which I'm able to do

it but the next generation is not able

to do that same way you'll find that

Indians don't have a problem checking of

languages they can speak French they can

speak you know Belgian probably you know

most of the languages people going from

here they pick up very easily for an

American especially an American from

Silicon Valley it's almost impossible to

imagine India as a high-technology

Development Center I mean just look

around this is amazing the average

person in Indian school or at least

three languages English Hindi and their

local louder's some of them know five or

six compare that to American students

think about it in terms of computer

languages what are they they have syntax

they have characters they have objects

they have verbs what's it in between C++

and Hindi not all that much whether they

have a 5,000 year tradition of

mathematics which we don't after the

world wide web and the browser is a

third break out invention that driving

the expansion of the web lifestyle it's

called the Java a network programming

language named after the Valley's

favorite fuel like the others it's

helped make the Internet easier to use

for anyone anywhere and with any kind of

computer because the internet grew in

such a haphazard way the computers on it

used many different programming

languages this wasn't a problem when the

networks were separate but when the

World Wide Web made it possible for them

to communicate there had to be a way to

make it easy a guy named James Gosling

came up with the answer he invented a

language that would run the same on any

computer one size fit at all which was

good for business

and like everything else on the internet

it had a strange name Java maybe he

drank too much coffee while working on

his invention better than naming it Budweiser

Budweiser

one of the most brilliant programmers on

the planet bill joy calls him the

greatest program

world came to my office one day because

I heard he was upset and I said James

Gosling what's the matter why aren't you

happy this was like in the early

nineties and he says I'm tired of

dealing with all this old legacy

computer environment just for a great

programmer it's kind of like trying to

fly by flapping your wings and he said I

want to go out and create a new

environment it was conceived way back in

1990 91 timeframe by a few engineers at

Sun Microsystems who wanted to create a

better better world in terms of software

delivery software deployment and they

were imagining consumers being plugged

into this networked world but they

didn't realize at the time was it was

the internet it was going to be the Internet

Internet

what's Java I mean Java is a building

material I mean it's it's like it's like

concrete it's something that you can use

to build software at out but it's a

material that's got some some pretty

different properties the one that has

sort of gotten the most airtime the most

people hear about is write once run

anywhere or being architecture neutral

where you can for the writer program

once and it will actually run on

different machines and it can Rove

across the network and I said I don't

care what you want to do wherever you

want to do it whatever how long ever

along with whoever for as much money

I'll set you up in a room I'll give you

all of Rami and Jolt Cola and potato

chips you want anything you need for as

long as you want just go do something

great he said really I said yeah I get

out of here so he went off we set him up

in downtown Palo Alto and they started

hiring a bunch of really great people

and they you know it's kind of like

Groundhog Day they'd come out every now

and then they'd look around and I'd look

and see what they had I don't get it

they go ok so they go back in certainly

early on I don't think Scott had a good

idea what it was about or what it was

for you know it was sort of this group

of you know rabble rousers off in the

corner doing something really odd that

he didn't know how it related to their

main business and you know the truth is

that at you know in the early times it

didn't relate to

in business everyone knows that if you

go to the computer store you have to buy

software that runs on Windows or a

different piece of software that runs on

the Mac with Java you can take a single

program and it will run on both and it

will run on both well that opportunity

was created because of the the internet

because the Internet is a mixed network

and it doesn't make sense to have 20

versions of your software on a single

server so the promise of the Internet

coincided just at the right time with

the great inventions by people like

James Gosling in the language it's taken

the world by storm it it's very clearly

now gonna be in some 300 million

computers just three years from now I

think there's 200 books on the market

right now on Java 4 million programmers

programming in it and it's only 700 days

old so that's phenomenal I've done many

things that have gotten very popular but

among the very sort of nerdy community

because the kind of stuff I do is stuff

that I have no idea how to explain it to

my mom and and or even explaining you

know even though the high level why it's

interesting to my mom and so it tends to

stay in a fairly close community and

have something that has touched people's

everyday lives surprised that surprised me

[Music]

the 1990s Internet has spun off to

significant challenges for bill gates

both netscape browser and sons

programming language java were not

invented at Microsoft bill was slow to

see the challenge at first then he took

action here on the shore of Lake

Washington near Seattle stands a

monument to Bill Gates brilliance or at

least to his money the last time anyone

tried to estimate bill's new house is

going to cost fifty million dollars but

over the last two years his wealth has

increased at a rate of 31 million

dollars per day so no matter what it

cost it doesn't matter

Bill Gates didn't get to be the richest

man in the world just because he's smart

or just because he's lucky it's because

he's smart and lucky and knows it and

pushes his every advantage to the limit

bill had largely ignored the internet

how could a non-commercial network offer

a business opportunity but by 1994 there

was blowing buzz about the web and

Netscape especially among new Microsoft

recruits fresh from college at the

urging of the troops bill went surfing

it was an all-nighter that changed

Microsoft and the internet industry

no went down to his places Hood Canal

and with instructions on how to get on

and what to go look for and he got on

and started looking around and then

started just going from site to site and

I think eventually spent greater part of

all night came back and had a meeting

and described the experience and said

that he was kind of blown away with just

how much was really yeah well we always

assume that Microsoft would be our

biggest enemy because they would have to

turn their attention to this

we got lucky for a while in that they

just they weren't paying attention there

when people inside Microsoft who knew

what Microsoft should do to respond to

us but the management team of Microsoft

was sort of almost willfully ignoring

what was happening in cases a smart guy

unlike the management of IBM in the

middle 80s Bill Gates is awake and

functionally and he noticed that the

internet was not going to be ignored he

tried to ignore it briefly and then he

saw it wasn't quickly he saw in time he

saw that it wasn't gonna be ignoring

what Bill Gates did was turn an industry

supertanker on a dime at first he didn't

really get the Internet but once he did

he wrote a memo called the coming

Internet tidal wave and quickly

refocused the entire company on

responding to the new environment

it's like Henry Ford going into aircraft

production or Boeing into pizza delivery

but it worked

Microsoft was ever building just in a

new direction dole likes to have a

general feeling of paranoia throughout

the entire company as to who's gonna

come along with something that's gonna

destroy one or all of our businesses and

some people are very receptive to an

understanding of a sudden direction

change when bill finally says that boy

we better do something about this

instantly people get it I wrote a memo

at one point called the internet tidal

wave that very explicitly said you know

I've told you many times in the past I

think the Internet is is a priority I'm

now telling you it is the priority and the

the

timing was very good there because who

are getting along in terms of Windows 95

we thought we had that all well

understood and we could really get a lot

of energy focused on the Internet

Microsoft announced to the world their

change of direction on a date with

historic significance for Americans

Pearl Harbor Day it was actually Admiral

Yamamoto who observed that he feared

we did a big event on December 7 in 1995

where we for the first time showed the

world how this had all built up and they

saw hey this is pretty dramatic this

company is going to deliver great

Internet software so the saying that was

an epiphany is a little too much but

saying that that that it became the

centerpiece of our strategy that's

absolutely right

you will hear from us that you know

we're not forming an Internet division

to us that's you know it's like having

an electricity division or a software

division the Internet is pervasive in

everything that that we're doing the big

break happened at the famous Pearl

Harbor they talked but you know

Microsoft was doing a bunch of stuff

leading up to that and in fact they have

this they have this this thing they do

now which is every three months they

come out and say you know Andrey

anounced how hardcore they are about the

internet and and so they have like done

that like five or six times now when the

slumbering giant awoke this was the

result Microsoft's own browser the

Internet Explorer a product designed

specifically to compete with Netscape

Navigator funny don't they look alike

but in 1996 there was a big difference

between them Netscape Navigator cost

business users $49 Internet Explorer was

free they're working hard as you can see

here implementing all the standards we

need and what what do you think we'll

charge for that like all the others

nothing okay but that's quite a deal

ours was always not free it was freely

downloadable but if you were a business

using it you had to talk to Netscape

about a licensing agreement that was the

way we felt we would be able to make

money in the early days and that was the

way we made money we made 75 million the

first year in revenues and 375 million

in the second year the third year ended

up ended up being somewhere north of 500

million in revenue Stan and I we did

that by selling giving giving licenses

for companies to make company-wide use

of the browser Microsoft's free Internet

Explorer started taking market share

from Netscape the people who care about

the market benefits of competition

that's a controversial thing to do

giving it away is an anti-competitive

technique they're trying to kill

Netscape by drawing up its revenue

sources and it's it should be illegal

they should not be permitted to do that

in any antitrust has any use its to go

in now and say you caught you spend

millions and millions of dollars to

develop the thing and you give it away

hmm why are you doing that clearly

you're doing that to damage Netscape

you're not allowed to do that Microsoft

came along in an attempt to put us out

of business

gave away the browser totally free even

to companies who wanted to use it for

business and it definitely had an impact

on us as a consequence we had to give

away give away our browser the results

were just as the first exponent of give

away software would have predicted John

McAfee if you have two competing

products and they are on a par in terms

of functionality and usability the free

one is the one that will propagate

maybe that's why Microsoft is just a

little sensitive about whether they are

or are not giving their browser away

Microsoft's never been accused of not

knowing how to make money it's it's

pretty straightforward if you can sell

volume software you can do quite well

now in order to keep Windows very strong

we felt having a free browser that

promoted our extensions and

well as providing all the power of all

the other standards that that was

critical to our strategy and so the

browser investment is totally paid for

by the fact that it helps Windows and

Windows is a very good quite profitable

business do we give away software I

don't think so

nobody ever told us we were giving away

the print manager the thing that lets

you configure printers in Windows it's

just a built-in piece of Windows the

browser similar is really a built-in

piece of Windows now we sometimes update

it when it's not time to update the rest

of Windows and so we basically sort of

think let's make sure people get all

those updates

but in point of fact to run our browser

you got on Windows so in a sense while

the browser itself may be free we're

getting paid on May 18th 1998 the

Microsoft Netscape dispute took on a new

dimension the US government stepped into

the fight the Department of Justice

filed an antitrust lawsuit against

Microsoft alleging anti-competitive

practices in the browser market the

Justice Department has charged Microsoft

with engaging in anti-competitive and

exclusionary practices designed to

maintain its monopoly in personal

computer operating systems and

attempting to extend that monopoly to

internet browser software the

intervention of Uncle Sam into an

industry which until now hasn't had much

regulation is a seismic event in the

history of the internet it may take

years to resolve but you know I bet

Microsoft even has plans to deal with

regulatory earthquake that scape is the

is the leader and Microsoft is the big

Microsoft's playing the role of IBM if I

might go back to the mid eighties so

Microsoft is the big bumbling company

who got taken by surprise with the

internet and might and Netscape is the

Microsoft has switched roles as

goodnight so Microsoft is now the

dominant monopoly which relies on much

too often I think on its size rather

than its excellence to succeed

well that escapes done a very good job

and you always expect new people to come along

along

I didn't know you know what their names

would be or who they would be but

they'll always be every year companies

that latch on to what the latest thing

is and and get a lot of visibility and

deliver products that relate to that for

their ruthless and vicious and if they

decide they want the business you're in

ask anybody who's gone up against them

directly in fact of course they weren't

in our market when we started so we were

hardly going after a market that they

were aware of but they then realized it

could be a big market and it's their

god-given right to own any big market

and software when you're up against Bill

Gates and his money and he is following

this strategy the best bet is to get

into another business you know just say

okay forget it

I'll do something else in life because

you cannot compete with that so who will

win this battle of the browsers

well Microsoft's blitzkrieg has already

taken a big bite out of navigators

market share

forcing Netscape to match Microsoft's

tactics and give their browser away is

history repeating itself will Bill Gates

on the Internet the way he already owns

the PC universe I don't think so no one

owns the Internet and it's a big place

growing so fast there's always room for

someone with a dream a taste for Cola

and a willingness to go without sleep

someone like Joe Kraus of excite the 26

year old tycoon gives me a tour of the

new headquarters for his billion-dollar

company this is where I figured we

filmed the death of Spock scene okay you

put me in here you put me in here yeah

and turn the Halon on [Music]

[Music]

the last mine melt tell my wife I love

her it's a new show it's a show every 90

minutes I'm like Shamu hey you brought

with you the alien baby you know this is

leaking security level ten actually

called the garage right so we figure

sort of hark back to our roots here in

the garage for executive calendar

meetings he dons the bulb the first time

we were with you guys was I don't know

ninety-four three years ago 94 in

another garage and I had a sense at that

time just a just a little sense that you

basically had no idea what you were in

you know up against that hasn't changed

just looking around me and saying wow

you know we have all these fantastically

dynamic people that we're working with

and you know this company exists here

because of us because of something that

we started and that's insanely

gratifying I'm sort of listening to

myself talk about this and think wow are

we really successful at this point have

we really gotten that big so that now

I'm telling small startup companies how

that you know how to do the same thing

because I think that the remembering

back to the garage helps keep-- helps

keep you paranoid because you realize

how quickly things can go from garage to

something like this and I think we all

feel extremely proud and happy and

what's been accomplished but I think

that it sort of reminds you that just as

easily as you can make it here you can

this is the Silicon Valley fairytale and

there are thousands more little gangs of

dreamers eating burritos and working all

night to make their fortunes in the

wired world so they could celebrate one

day with a trip to Hawaii we had all

said at some point you know the six

founders were all going to take a trip

to Hawaii and it always was sort of well

when we accomplish the next thing and

when we accomplish the next thing to do

it so when we get our funding we'll do

it we got the funding we didn't do it

when we get our strategic round of

financing we didn't do that when we get

so the Excite guys got to Hawaii at last

Aloha gram four years ago he had a

one-sixth share in a bag of rice today

he's worth a hundred million dollars

dreams large and small can come true in

the age of the Internet as any computer

billionaire will tell you

I went on a camping trip two weeks ago

with my family how did I find the

campground an old age their each other

nice little bunnies and the cabins and

the tent sites boom I reserved right there on the spot let's go camping the

there on the spot let's go camping the Internet has come a long way from the

Internet has come a long way from the halls of the Pentagon I'm sharing and

halls of the Pentagon I'm sharing and the first faltering attempts that gets

the first faltering attempts that gets with you to my way of thinking the

with you to my way of thinking the ARPANET is the best investments this

ARPANET is the best investments this country has ever made other than

country has ever made other than probably the Louisiana Purchase no one

probably the Louisiana Purchase no one owns the internet no one controls the

owns the internet no one controls the Internet the internet is the common

Internet the internet is the common heritage of all humankind the killer

heritage of all humankind the killer after the Internet is telepresence it's

after the Internet is telepresence it's using the net to be places that you

using the net to be places that you don't have to go to we want to have a

don't have to go to we want to have a conference where everyone to tens but

conference where everyone to tens but nobody goes so that's how you get your

nobody goes so that's how you get your name on a ball park maybe one day this

name on a ball park maybe one day this will be exciting our or prims Lee Park

will be exciting our or prims Lee Park or a virtual park which everyone attends

or a virtual park which everyone attends on the web

on the web [Music]

[Music] but for peanuts and cracker jack and

but for peanuts and cracker jack and that authentic sunburn up in the

that authentic sunburn up in the bleachers against it just have to be boy

[Applause] buy me some peanuts and

[Music] - three-strikes-you're-out happy home

- three-strikes-you're-out happy home [Applause]

[Applause] [Music]

[Music] funding for this program has been

funding for this program has been provided by the annual financial support

provided by the annual financial support of viewers like you

of viewers like you and by the Alfred P sloan Foundation

Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video

Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds

One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps

Paste YouTube URL

Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript

Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds

Get Our Chrome Extension

Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.

Add to Chrome — Free

Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms

Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!

YouTube

←

→

↻

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YoutubeToText

←

→

↻

https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

YouTube TranscriptPreparing your results…

YouTube Transcript:Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet: Part 3 - Wiring the World

AutoDub

Video Transcript

Paste YouTube URL

Transcript Extraction Form

Get Our Chrome Extension

Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!

YouTube Transcript:
Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet: Part 3 - Wiring the World