Download: The True Story of the Internet

The story of Netscape’s rapid rise as the company that popularized the web browser—and its fierce battle with Microsoft. The episode examines how Microsoft responded to the threat posed by Netscape, leading to a defining corporate conflict of the early Internet era.

A look at the race to organize the rapidly expanding World Wide Web. The episode follows early search companies such as Yahoo and Excite before charting Google’s emergence and its transformation of how people find information online.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar recount how their companies grew from small Internet ventures into major global businesses. The episode also explores the speculative dot-com boom, the crash of 2000, and the online companies that survived it.

The Internet shifts from a place primarily used to publish and consume information into a platform driven by its users. Beginning with Shawn Fanning and Napster, the episode explores peer-to-peer file sharing, Web 2.0, user-generated content and the rise of social networking.