So was Maps, originally. This is why there's so many fans of the 20% project concept.

Sorry to be a pedant but Maps is not a 20% project, it was an acquisition of a company called Where 2 Technologies. Google Earth was also an acquisition (Keyhole).

GMail however is a 20% project. :)

A distributed file sharing system (later known as the Internet) was Tim Behrners Lee's side project at CERN for a while too :)

He was only allowed to take his 20% project to 100% after his manager wrote up a justification XD

> later known as the Internet

My turn to be pedantic, I guess, but 80 and 443 are only two of many available ports. The internet is much bigger than just the web, even if lots of people never bother to look beyond their browser.

Pedantry is fine by me when accurate and done in the spirit of learning more nuance about a subject :)

An important clarification

If you ever get to go to Geneva, swing by the CERN exhibit. There's the original fileserver, complete with 'This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER DOWN!!' scrawled on tape stuck over the power button. There's also his paper describing the WWW with the feedback of his manager written across the top: "vague but interesting...".

It's kind of comforting to know that my academic and computing experiences thus far are shared both across the globe and across decades.

Haha "vague but interesting".

Isn't it amazing how big of a disconnect there is between "people who are capable of identifying/executing on big ideas" (aka Tim and his manager)....

and "the projects that businesses/agencies want their employees to do"

Especially when, in hindsight, it's anything but vague.

To be pedantic, he wrote "Vague, but exciting". See http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html for more info.