What if someone had decided to charge money for using the internet? On April 30, 1993, a European science laboratory called CERN made one of the most important decisions in modern history. They released the World Wide Web software to the public for free. The web had been invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN. He created it in 1989 as a way for scientists to share research with each other. His system used hyperlinks, the clickable words that take you from one page to another. Before 1993, only universities and research labs could use the web. Berners-Lee and CERN could have charged money for it. If they had, the internet might look very different today. Instead, they gave it away. Within one year, the number of websites jumped from 130 to over 2,700. By 1995, millions of people were going online. What makes the web different from the internet? The internet is the network of connected computers. The web is the system of pages, links, and browsers that makes information easy to find and read. Think of the internet as the roads and the web as the cars and signs that make the roads useful. Without this invention, there would be no websites or search engines.