<P> In September 1994, Berners - Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the European Commission . It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web . Berners - Lee made the Web available freely, with no patent and no royalties due . The W3C decided that its standards must be based on royalty - free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone . </P> <P> By 1996 it became obvious to most publicly traded companies that a public Web presence was no longer optional . Though at first people saw mainly the possibilities of free publishing and instant worldwide information, increasing familiarity with two - way communication over the "Web" led to the possibility of direct Web - based commerce (e-commerce) and instantaneous group communications worldwide . More dotcoms, displaying products on hypertext webpages, were added into the Web . </P> <P> Low interest rates in 1998--99 facilitated an increase in start - up companies . Although a number of these new entrepreneurs had realistic plans and administrative ability, most of them lacked these characteristics but were able to sell their ideas to investors because of the novelty of the dot - com concept . </P> <P> Historically, the dot - com boom can be seen as similar to a number of other technology - inspired booms of the past including railroads in the 1840s, automobiles in the early 20th century, radio in the 1920s, television in the 1940s, transistor electronics in the 1950s, computer time - sharing in the 1960s, and home computers and biotechnology in the 1980s . </P>

When was world wide web introduced to the public