Surveys performed by International Data Corporation and Matrix Information and Directory Services found that as of September 1997 there were between 53 and 57 million users of the Internet worldwide. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, the Internet was a communication and research tool used almost exclusively for academic and military purposes. The difference between the Internet and the WWW is similar to the distinction between a computer and a multimedia program that runs on the computer. The explosion in use and popularity of the Internet in the 1990s is most likely due to the graphics-intensive nature of the World Wide Web. Individuals, companies, and institutions use the Internet in many ways.
Businesses use the Internet to provide access to complex databases, such as financial databases.
Companies can carry out commerce online, including advertising, selling, buying, distributing products, and providing after-sales services. Businesses and institutions can use the Internet for voice and video conferencing and other forms of communication that allow people to telecommute, or work from a distance. Scientists and scholars use the Internet to communicate with colleagues, to perform research, to distribute lecture notes and course materials to students, and to publish papers and articles. Individuals use the Internet for communication, entertainment, finding information, and to buy and sell goods and services. Prior to the mid-1990s, servers were usually very powerful computers such as mainframe or supercomputers, with extremely high processing speeds and large amounts of memory.