Google has dedicated its home page doodle to the World Wide Web to mark the system’s 30th anniversary.
The animated illustration shows a 1980s-style computer — similar to the NeXT Cube Sir Tim Berners-Lee used to create the online application which has since grown to encompass nearly two billion websites.
Google doodles are animations or images that replace the company’s traditional logo on the search engine’s homepage, normally to mark milestone anniversaries or birthdays of high-profile people, places and inventions.
On 12 March 1989, Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for a “large hypertext database with typed links” as a means for his colleagues at nuclear physics lab Cern to better share information among multiple computers.
A Google post accompanying the Doodle said: “By 1991, the external Web servers were up and running. The Web would soon revolutionise life as we know it, ushering in the information age. Today, there are nearly two billion websites online. Whether you use it for e-mail, homework, gaming or checking out videos of cute puppies, chances are you can’t imagine life without the Web.”
However, in an open letter to mark the 30th anniversary, Berners-Lee urged the public, government and other organisations to come together to ensure everyone has access to the technology, and called for changes to be made to protect users from rising incidents of hacking and data breaches.
“The fight for the Web is one of the most important causes of our time,” he said. “Today, half of the world is online. It is more urgent than ever to ensure the other half are not left behind offline, and that everyone contributes to a web that drives equality, opportunity and creativity.”