Celebrating 20 Years of the World Wide Web

Today, we are marking the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web (April 30, 1993).

To celebrate, CERN has reposted the famous first world wide web page on the very first website created by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

I remember that very first web page and fondly recall “surfing” the world wide web in 1993. It was fun, immediate and satisfying. A perfect distraction for a first year computer science student.

Very shortly Marc Andreessen’s Netscape Navigator took over the Web with a better browsing experience. We were hooked. There was no turning back for the Web.

1993 was special for another reason. It was also the year I met my terrific co-founders Suhan and Darius independently at York University. We’ve known each other for 20 years and are fortunate to be able to still work together.

We moved from surfers to hosters. That world wide web distraction quickly turned into a big opportunity just 3 years later. We moved from surfing the Web to hosting Web-sites for others. We created what would be later known as Netfirms, one of the world’s popular web hosts powering millions of world wide web pages.

20 years later there are over 2 billion people online. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Internet companies such as Netscape, Yahoo, Cisco, Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft, the world feels smaller and more connected. Mobile platforms, social networking and messaging all owe gratitude to the humble birth of the Web.

Public by default.The Web was initially designed to publish what you wanted public. That didn’t last long. We are using the Web for everything.

Just like postal mail, the telegraph and the telephone we love new ways that help us communicate. We are willing to trade in privacy when we get something significant in return. On the web, it was convenience and a faster way to communicate.

Now, 20 years later, it’s time for a real conversation about something we’d had to give up on the Web: Privacy

Blame it on Hotmail. It was the first, most popular cloud service ever. Wow, what an obvious yet simple idea – access your e-mail from anywhere. Users loved the idea of hosted e-mail. What many don’t realize is that Hotmail (Gmail, Yahoo and all the popular services as well) have full access to your data. Not many people are aware of that. Again, we are trading in privacy for convenience.

Perhaps hosted e-mail could be an exception. After all, e-mail still travels via public networks to reach its destination. You knew that of course, didn’t you? (Most people don’t).

Hold on to your hard drive. But when companies and individuals started moving their private documents, photos, videos to cloud storage services we saw a huge red flag. Existing cloud providers get full access to your data. We don’t think this is cool.

What’s stored on your cloud is your business. Use the cloud as if it were a private folder on your computer. It surprises us that in 2013 there isn’t an easy and secure way to get anywhere access to your content nor be able to collaborate with complete privacy.

Sync.com exists to right this wrong. It’s been 20 years. Far too long.

We are here to bring privacy back.

Posted by Thomas Savundra Sync.com Co-founder

Edited to update company name to Sync.com