1972 Electronic mail is introduced. Queen Elizabeth sends her first email in 1976. The first effort to index the Internet is created by Peter Deutsch at McGill University in Montreal, who devises Archie, an archive of FTP sites. Unlike other Internet protocols, such as FTP and email, the Web is accessible through a graphical user interface. Gopher, the first user-friendly interface, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot.
Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.
1994 White House launches Web page. Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term spamming to the Internet vocabulary. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day. The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999.