1950s-1980s

ARPANET — the beginning of the internet (1969)

The first email (1971)
ARPANET switches to TCP/IP (1985)
DNS comes into play (1985)
The launch of AOL (1985)
The IRC for direct messaging (1988)
The beginning of the World Wide Web (1989)
The first commercial dial-up ISP (1989)

1990s–2009
The first search engine (1990)
The first webpage (1991)
The first webcam
First photo uploaded on the internet (1992)
Government participation (1993)
First secure ecommerce transaction (1994)
The first social media platform (1996)
The invention of Wi-Fi (1997)
Here comes Google (1998)

2000–2009
The burst of the dot-com bubble (2000)
The launch of Wikipedia (2001)
MySpace explodes (2003)
Digg takes the lead (2004)
iPhones and the mobile web (2007)
The introduction of Bitcoin (2009)
ICANN policy changes (2009)

2010–2019
Social media 2010
Smart technologies 2011
E-commerce and online entertainment 2012