web 2.0 growth

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources.The Web, though, is becoming the first piece of the bigger network as it meshes with new technologies that started from disparate corners of the industry — such as Wi-Fi wireless broadband connections, the Global Positioning System (GPS) and radio frequency identification tags (RFID).Web creator Tim Berners-Lee has been talking about a version of such a system for a couple of years. "The Web can reach its full potential only if it becomes a place where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people,".
Life span of Net
1994:38 million Internet users; 3,000 Web sites worldwide; 35% of U.S. schools wired
GPS satellites fully functional
Web grows at a 341,634% annual rate
1995:eBay and Yahoo founded.
The first macro virus is discovered in a Word document.
1996:The number of Net hosts exceeds 9 million.
1997:71,618 Usenet newsgroups.
1998:Google officially opens its doors, about two years after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin developing a search engine.
1999:Online retailers register $5.3 billion in sales.
2000:304 million people have access to the Net.
2001:30 million Web sites exist.
Osama bin Laden No. 1 searched on Google in October.
Apple unveils the iPod.
2002:Verizon launches first high-speed 3G cell network.
Friendster social networking site founded.
2003:Wal-Mart tells its suppliers to put RFID tags on all pallets by 2005.
Hewlett-Packard ships 1 million digital cameras each quarter, double the previous year.
2004:One millionth BlackBerry e-mail device sold.
Google indexes 4.2 billion Web pages.
800 million Internet users, 100 million songs downloaded from iTunes; 99% of U.S. public schools wired.
In the year and a half since, the term "Web 2.0" has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google. But there's still a huge amount of disagreement about just what Web 2.0 means, with some people decrying it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, and others accepting it as the new conventional wisdom.