The Global Network Navigator

In the early '90s, we set out to get our books online. But we soon realized that we needed something that didn't exist: a free, standard "online book reader." And then, in 1991 (before Mosaic, or even HTML), we saw Pei Wei's Viola Web browser, and realized that here was an interface that would radically change how online information was published. Dale Dougherty, head of O'Reilly's Online Publishing Group, was immediately intrigued with the idea of publishing a magazine on the Web with Viola. The possibilities were misspending offered a single front end to many diverse information sources, let the user click freely from one thing to another, and it could even combine text and graphics on the same page!

Meanwhile, we had published the first book on the Internet, The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog. We realized that bookstores (and many of their customers) didn't yet comprehend the Internet, so we asked Pei to create a demo of the book for in-store kiosks, using Viola. When he saw Pei's work, Tim said, "That's not a demo, that's a product." The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was born.

(Caption: An early version of GNN viewed with Pei Wei's browser, Viola.)

When it was launched early in 1993, GNN was the first purely commercial Web site. It was also the first Web portal (predating Yahoo, and incorporating the NCSA What's New page), the first Web-zine, and, for better or worse, it introduced advertising to the Web.