How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

This is a fun book, but I take exception with the first half of the title – this is not “how the internet happened,” which explains the qualifier “from Netscape to the iPhone.” This is really about 13 years in the history of the web, mainly. “The Internet” dates to the 50s or the 60s, but this is a pretty interesting look at what most people understand to be the internet since the birth of the web.

The book concentrates on companies and products. Each chapter covers a couple, and all the familiar faces are there: Netscape, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, eBay, PayPal, MySpace, Napster, and on and on.

Given so much breadth, the book can’t go too deep into each one, but I really did learn quite a bit. Each chapter had multiple bits and pieces I didn’t know or hadn’t put together, so for a broad, fast-reading overview, it’s really well-done.