When did the WWW become publicly available?
World Wide Web Worm
The World Wide Web Worm (WWWW) was one of the earliest search engines for the World Wide Web (WWW). It is claimed by some to be the first search engine, though it was not released until March 1994, by which time a number of other search engines had been made publicly available. It was developed in September 1993 by Oliver McBryan at the University of Colorado as a research project.
Lina Trivedi
Later in 1995, Trivedi approached Warner to talk about a new development that existed on college campuses called the Internet. She indicated that the Internet was primarily a research tool, however college students were starting to make personal Websites and she thought creating a Web site for Beanie Babies could present a unique opportunity to engage the consumer market. She brought her 14.4k modem that was supplied by DePaul University where she was enrolled as a student, and demonstrated how the Internet works. Mr. Warner was intrigued and he gave Trivedi free license to create a Web site using her judgement and skills. By the time the first iteration of the Ty Web site was published in late 1995, only 1.4% of Americans were using the Internet. The population of people using the Internet grew exponentially in the following years, along with the popularity of Beanie Babies.