World Wide Web transforms global economy and commerce

The World Wide Web, officially launched on 6 August 1991 and opened to the public in the early 1990s, dramatically lowered the cost of information and made communication almost instantaneous. This enabled businesses to coordinate activities across continents in seconds rather than days.

The Web acted as a catalyst for globalization, allowing multinational companies to design products in California, source components from South Korea and Taiwan, assemble them in China, and sell worldwide. It also gave small firms access to international markets, creating entirely new sectors such as e‑commerce, digital advertising, social media, streaming services, and cloud computing, now worth trillions of dollars. Companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Alibaba and Netflix grew into global giants whose existence depends on the Internet. Software shifted from a support tool to a core production factor across industries, boosting productivity dramatically.