Top 15 People Who Changed the Internet

An entry in the wiki site Take Back the Web points to 15 people who changed the Internet. These are personalities that pioneered some of the most popular and widely used properties on the web.

The list mostly cited people who owns the top internet companies today which includes:

1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google Inc.)
2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Created World Wide Web)
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
4. Shawn Fanning (Napster, Rupture)
5. Kevin Rose (Digg, Revision3, Pownce)
6. Matt Mullenweg (WordPress, Automattic)
7. Bram Cohen (BitTorrent)
8. Pierre Omidyar (eBay, Omidyar Networks)
9. Mike Morhaime (Blizzard Entertainment – World of Warcraft)
10. Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia)
11. Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
12. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube)
13. David Filo and Jerry Yang (Yahoo! Inc)
14. Jack Ma (Alibaba)
15. Jeff Preston Bezos (Amazon)

While I do not completely agree with the top 15 in the list, I think several other people deserve a spot in there:

Bill Gates (Microsoft) – mainly because of Internet Explorer. Let’s admit it, if it were not for the IE browser, we would still be paying for Netscape Navigator until today.
Steve Jobs (Apple) – though Apple is mostly a software/hardware company, iTunes proved that selling digital music online can be bigger than CD singles.
Jarkko Oikarinen (IRC) – he invented the Internet Relay Chat Protocol, a service that’s basically a Web 1.0 epitome of MySpace/Friendster/Facebook + Napster in the 90s.

Who else do you think deserves to be in the list?

Who created the World Wide Web?

Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web.

Why does the article think Bill Gates deserves a spot in the top 15?

Bill Gates deserves a spot because Internet Explorer made web browsing free instead of paid.

What did Jarkko Oikarinen invent?

Jarkko Oikarinen invented the Internet Relay Chat Protocol.

React to this article:

42 Comments

donbalanhi · 14 years ago

Ikaw ang susunod sa listahan Sir Abe. Ahihihi…

DG · 18 years ago

I think whoever pioneered porn on the internet should be on the list… can’t deny the impact of porn on the internet :\

joe · 18 years ago

we should also be grateful to these forsaken people Paul Baran, Donald Davies & Leonard Kleinrock (they are the architect of the internet)

Warrior In Scrubs · 18 years ago

Linus Torvalds, hands down.

Jonathan Abrams (Friendster)–who pioneered social network service/social networking sites–should have been there instead of Mark Zuckerberg (FaceBook).

Whoever pioneered or popularized online forums/discussion groups should also be in the list.

Julius · 18 years ago

Mine should be the ff to be included:

Linus Torvalds, Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu), Bill Gates (nah I don’t think so), Steve Jobs.

beeps · 18 years ago

Abraham Olandres – Yugatech

Adrian · 18 years ago

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Jan Alvin · 18 years ago

I think the owner of firefox should be included.

BrianB · 18 years ago

AhmedF,

True. There is a randomness reminiscent of Al Gore’s claim to some of the people in the list.

ewancoo · 18 years ago

Firefox changed the Internet :)

AhmedF · 18 years ago

How in God’s name is Digg more influential than eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc?

Jef · 18 years ago

I think each one of them deserves to be on top 15. Unfortunately, they are more than 15. To agree on the ratings (that is not likely still) we must set the criteria.

What is our criteria?

Jef