到今年12月20日，網絡（曾用名“萬維網”）就滿27歲了。27年前的12月20日，英國工程師、科學家蒂姆·伯納斯-李在瑞士歐洲核子研究委員會的一臺NeXT電腦上建立了世界上第一個網站，從此拉開了互聯網時代的大幕。

該網站的建立在當時并不是什么大事件，它只是用幾句話說明了萬維網這個概念，但它首次提出了一些對于互聯網發展十分重要的指導原則，這些原則直至今天仍有重要意義。比如超鏈接的概念，它不僅重新將文檔定義為非線性文本，最終還幾乎重新定義了任何形式的媒體。再比如瀏覽器，它只是一個兼容了通用格式標準的軟件，卻能讓任何人在全球任何角落閱讀網站上的內容。

自此之后，萬維網進入了飛速發展時期。到90年代中葉，所謂的VRML，也就是虛擬現實建模語言掀起了萬維網的另一場巨變。Adobe公司的Shockwave和Flash媒體播放器也成了冉冉升起的互聯網新寵。在那個時候，有誰能想到，曾被微軟（IE瀏覽器）和網景（Navigator瀏覽器）等公司壟斷一時的瀏覽器市場會迅速分化，而谷歌（Chrome瀏覽器）這種后起之秀會崛起成為一方霸主呢？

以下是《時代》評選的史上最有影響力的15個網站以及他們的上榜原因。

15. Match.com??

很多80后、90后都把世紀之交的這幾年看作一個年齡的分水嶺，由此界定出了“前互聯網時代”和“互聯網時代”。當然，作為一個美國人，如果你用過Match.com這個相親網站約過妹子，也是一件暴露年齡的事兒。這個網站大概是1995年前后創辦的，不過其前身在1993年就上線了。一開始它只是一個為報紙推廣在線分類廣告的網站，不過后來它很快轉變了發展方向，開始根據興趣愛好幫人推薦對象。到現在為止，這個堪稱一切相親網站鼻祖的網站已經進入了25個國家，擁有了數千萬用戶。

14. Reddit

自從互聯網被發明出來，在線論壇這種東西差不多就存在了。所以說Reddit與撥號上網時代的討論版也沒有什么本質的區別。不過2005年創辦的Reddit還融合了社交新聞功能，所以它是一個既有新聞又有社交的網站。這種將有趣的熱門話題與在線社區合二為一的理念受到了網友的廣泛歡迎，目前Reddit已經有了數億用戶，每年的新聞點擊量以數百億計。因此，Reddit也頗為自信地給自己打出了“互聯網的頭版”的標語。

13. Pandora

在互聯網發展的早期階段，MP3.com等網站一度掀起了音樂分享的浪潮，最終以iTunes和Spotify等數字平臺的出現達到頂峰。然而Pandora的出現卻表明，音樂也可是可以按照人的品味來推薦的。Pandora創辦于2000年，只要用戶在播放器里播放了他們知道的或是某些風格的音樂，網站就會根據這些歌曲的共性特征，繼續推薦用戶可能感興趣的音樂。用戶可以向網站推薦的音樂給一個“贊”或“踩”，從而“訓練”網站進一步了解自己的偏好。現在這種機制已經無處不在了，無論是亞馬遜的“新品推薦”，還是蘋果iTunes的“For You”精品內容推薦，全都使用了這種機制。

12.維基解密

由于維基解密在2016年美國大選中扮演了不容小覷的角色，人們還一度將這個網站與“五角大樓文件”事件（指70年代有人將大量五角大樓關于越戰的機密文件泄露給媒體，揭露了越戰真相，加劇了美國的反戰浪潮）進行對比，從而圍繞大規模泄露是否應該而產生了激烈的爭論。維基解密是2006年由澳大利亞籍激進人士朱利安·阿桑奇創辦的，它為人們泄露國家和機構的敏感信息提供了一個平臺。最讓維基解密名聲大噪的，是它曾多次泄露關于美國軍事行動、外交行動以及集中營的機密信息，另外它也曾多次力挺過美國國安局的泄密者斯諾登。2016年，維基解密公然介入了美國總統大選，泄露了多封民主黨高層的往來郵件，使其深陷政治漩渦中，據稱這些郵件是由俄羅斯特工提供的。

11.海盜灣

開放性平臺天生就容易招來爭議，容易成為一些團體挑戰文化和法律規則的舞臺。在本世紀前幾年，Napster等網站也曾因為能下載非法音樂而火熱一時，然而海盜灣（The Pirate Bay）才是非法下載的王者。海盜灣是由三個瑞典人于2003年創辦的，它公然喊出了“信息就是渴望自由”這樣的反知識產權口號，并且提供他人創建的內容的種子和鏈接，使用戶可以下載電影、音樂、電子書等等，赤裸裸地視有關法律法規如無物。雖然這個網站在全世界都惹了雪片似的官司，域名也多次遭到查封，甚至屢次受到刑事調查，但不知怎的，這個網站居然在這樣嚴酷的打擊下堅強地活了下來，成了P2P文件共享界的一個神話。

10. Info.cern.ch

這個網站是由“萬維網之父”蒂姆·伯納斯-李于1989年在瑞士的歐洲核子研究委員會創建的。以現在的眼光看，這個網站當然不會給人任何驚艷之感。但作為萬維網的原型，它的影響力是勿庸置疑的。它就是燎原的星星之火。這個網站直至今日還可以訪問，它為萬維網制定的一些規則已經滲入到了當代網站的DNA里，比如超鏈接、網站地圖、“關于我們”和聯系信息等等。三十年過去了，網站設計的視聽元素已經有了翻天覆地的變化，但伯納斯-李關于“網站應該是什么”的基本思考，直至今日仍然具有重要的指導意義。

9. eBay

雖然亞馬遜才是當今全球最大的電商網站，但最早讓買家和賣家在網上做生意這個概念火起來的卻是eBay。eBay創辦于1995年，它起初是一個拍賣網站，然而它不僅靠銷售二手商品賺了錢，更重要的是永遠改變了世界的發展方向。eBay也為后來的Etsy（一家允許任何人銷售手工藝品的網站，用戶也可以在該網站上經營一個小店）等網商奠定了基礎。雖然亞馬遜可能是你買衛生紙、日用品和小禮品的地方，但如果你想找一些上檔次或者稀罕的東西，比如限量版的運動鞋或者是脫銷的iPhone等等，人們還是會去eBay。

8.德拉吉報告

馬特·德拉吉創辦的“德拉吉報告”（Drudge Report）網站之所以走紅，是因為它最早曝光了克林頓與萊溫斯基的性丑聞。不過這個網站極少自己生產新聞，它更像是一個美國保守派媒體的新聞大雜燴，它的文章基本上都是從網絡上轉載的，然后重新安上一個意識形態意味很濃的標題（但卻讓人很難不去點擊）。這幾年，德拉吉報告愛搞“標題黨”、不重視網頁設計的毛病仍然沒有什么改觀，堪稱是撥號上網時代的活化石，但這個網站直至今日在華盛頓仍然很有影響力（而且有很多讀者），很多政商大佬都是它的讀者。

7.雅虎

很多年前，當“谷歌”還沒有成為一個動詞的時候，曾經有一個大名鼎鼎的網站叫雅虎。在那個互聯網混亂式增長的年代，為了梳理一團亂麻似的網上內容，雅虎曾經扮演了一個網站黃頁的角色，用人工編輯對新聞和網站進行分類收錄。不過隨著谷歌的相關性搜索算法成為主流，雅虎也漸漸靠邊站了。雖然現在雅虎已經沒什么存在感了，但雅虎的核心理念——幫助互聯網用戶透過互聯網的種種雜音，找到自己想要的東西，卻依然是網絡信息分類的核心要義。

6. Craigslist

早在你能用智能手機各種約、上Trulia找房源、上Indeed找兼職之前，Craigslist網站就已經誕生了。這個網站直到2017年仍然是房產交易和求職招聘的熱門網站，它的月活躍用戶達6000萬人以上。Craigslist創辦于1995年，它起初是一個刊登舊金山的各種活動的電郵列表，后來其創始人克雷格·紐馬克把它做成了一個分類廣告網站和在線論壇。這個網站的影響力已經不僅僅局限于網絡了，很多人認為，報紙行業之所以日薄西山，與在線廣告搶走了報刊廣告的大量財源有很大關系。

5.YouTube

以事后諸葛亮的角度看，在網上看視頻簡直是一件天經地義的事——電腦顯示器就是一個小號的電視嘛！不過YouTube的誕生卻宣告了人人都能成為一個視頻網紅。就像早期的博客平臺使人人都成了當代魯迅一樣，YouTube（以及后來的Instagram和Snapchat）也讓每個有智能手機的人都能成為視頻內容的出版商。這一點帶來的影響是難以估量的，當然這也是柄雙刃劍：一方面，人們的娛樂生活更豐富了，我們也更容易學到新技能，或是與遠方的朋友保持聯系；另一方面，它也滋生了大量的低俗謾罵和仇視煽動的視頻。目前YouTube仍在想方設法解決這種問題。

4. Facebook

這個網站是CEO馬克·扎克伯格于21世紀頭幾年創立的，一開始他只想在網上給哈佛的同學做個同學錄，沒想到它竟然成了全球最大的社交網絡。Facebook目前的月活躍用戶已經超過了20億，遠遠超過了微信的9.68億、Instagram的7億和Twitter的3.28億。現在，Facebook已經不僅僅是一個與親友聯系的媒介，更成了一個新聞與宣傳的平臺。當然，有的時候宣傳寫得越來越像新聞了，你很難分得清誰是誰。最近，Facebook宣布將大力整治“假新聞”，并表示正在優化網站程序，以減少虛假信息和“標題黨”的傳播。

3.維基百科

你的高中老師和大學教授或許告訴過你，不要什么事都相信維基百科。然而自從2001年創辦以來，維基百科的成功顯然是勿庸置疑的。憑借500萬個英文詞目，維基百科已經成為當之無愧的互聯網百科全書。不過維基百科的開放性雖然造就了它的成功，卻也是它最大的問題所在。由于任何網民都可以編輯維基百科的條目，因此這個平臺很容易受到偏見的影響，有時其信息甚至是完全錯誤的。但這并未阻礙維基百科的流行，據亞馬遜的分析網站Alexa統計，維基百科已經成為全球流量第五大的網站。

2.亞馬遜

2017年的亞馬遜已經成為一家零售和科技巨頭，從沙拉醬到服務器空間，沒有它不賣的。不過起初它只是一家不起眼的在線書店，但它為此后的所有電商鋪平了道路。雖然像“開網店”和“購物車”這種概念并不是亞馬遜首創，然而在那個很多消費者不敢將信用卡號輸入瀏覽器的時代，卻是亞馬遜推動電商成為了主流。目前，亞馬遜的銷售流水已經占到了美國零售業總體銷售額的5%,隨著傳統零售業的銷售收入不斷萎縮，這一份額預計還將繼續上漲。

1.谷歌

自從1998年創立以來，“Google”這個詞已經成了我們的口頭禪，它甚至作為一個英文的及物動詞被收入了《韋氏詞典》。這個詞已經成了搜索引擎的同義詞——現在你很少會說“在網上查一下”，而是會說“Google一下”。據調查機構Net Market Share統計，谷歌也是網絡上最流行的搜索工具，占據了移動端的97%和PC端的79%的搜索引擎使用率。 （財富中文網）

譯者：賈政景

本文原載于《時代》雜志。

The web, or “world wide web” as we used to say, turns 27 years old on December 20. On that date, nearly three decades ago, British engineer and scientist Tim Berners-Lee launched the world’s first website, running on a NeXT computer at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland.

The website wasn’t much at the time, just a few sentences organized into topic areas that laid out the arguments for the concept. But it established vital first principles still essential to the web as it exists today: the notion of hyperlinks that reimagined documents (and eventually any form of media) as nonlinear texts, and the ability for anyone, anywhere in the world, to peruse that content by way of a browser: a piece of software that cohered to universal formatting standards.

It’s been a wild ride since. In the mid-1990s VRML (or as it was then known, Virtual Reality Markup Language) seemed on the verge of transforming the web. Adobe’s Shockwave and Flash media players were at one point multimedia stars in the ascendant. Who could have known in those early days, that by 2017, a landscape once loomed over by companies like Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Netscape (Navigator) would fractionalize and give way to totally new players like Google (Chrome)?

Here’s TIME’s collection of the 15 websites that most influenced the medium, and why.

15.Match.com

Emerging generations may someday look back at the late 20th and early 21st centuries as a kind of dividing line: before and after the Internet, and before and after we scrutinized potential dates with a service like Match.com. The latter’s been around since 1995, an online dating service whose inception in 1993 was originally to distribute online classified ads for newspapers. But that quickly shifted to helping people make screened and interests-matched interpersonal connections, culminating in a service that today operates in 25 countries and boasts tens of millions of members.

14.Reddit

Online forums have been around since the Internet’s inception, so in that sense, Reddit’s just the modern face of what began as dial-up discussion boards. But Reddit, which arrived in 2005, also folds in social news curation, making it a combination story-and-reaction hub. That notion of melding interesting, obscure or hot button topics with fan communities has proven so popular that it’s lured hundreds of millions of users who generate tens of billions of page views annually, giving rise to a site slogan that plausibly reads “The front page of the internet.”

13.Pandora

Early Internet sites like MP3.com kicked off a music-sharing wave that’s culminated in digital platforms like iTunes and Spotify, but Pandora exemplifies the notion of online streamed tunes with recommendations delivered to taste. Launched in 2000, Pandora let users play songs they knew or from genre categories in a browser, then followed with suggested songs based on shared traits. Users could give each selection a thumbs up or down, “training” the service to cater to their preferences. You can see elements of that process in everything from Amazon’s “New For You” product recommendations, to Apple’s “For You” iTunes content curation tab.

12. WikiLeaks

A site once contrasted with The Pentagon Papers for its subversive “document dumps” of classified information has in the wake of the 2016 election become a battleground for debate about the role of mass scale whistleblowing and propaganda. Established in 2006 by Australian activist Julian Assange as a means to anonymously divulge sensitive information about countries and institutions, Wikileaks was best known for its revelations about U.S. military operations, diplomatic activities, detention camps and abetting of NSA leaker Edward Snowden — until 2016, when the site involved itself in the U.S. presidential election by releasing troves of Democratic party emails allegedly supplied by Russian operatives.

11. The Pirate Bay

Open platforms invite controversy by their nature, giving voice to groups who want to challenge cultural or legal principles. Sites like Napster kickstarted illicit music-sharing in the early 2000s, but The Pirate Bay, launched by a trio of Swedes in 2003, exemplifies the anti-copyright argument that “information wants to be free.” The site indexes content hosted by others, providing links that its users can use to download movies, music, books and more — often in flagrant violation of information-sharing laws. Though hounded across the globe by lawsuits, domain seizures and criminal investigations, the site somehow persists and remains a flashpoint for debate over the virtues and perils of peer-to-peer file sharing.

10．Info.cern.ch

Created by “father of the web” Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 at the CERN research center in Switzerland, info.cern.ch isn’t much to look at today. But the archetype for anything is influential by default, and that’s certainly true of this, the spark for every website that followed. Still viewable today, the site spotlights features in the DNA of every modern website, including hyperlinks, a site map, an About-style page and contact information. We’ve made order of magnitude changes to the audiovisual aspects of web design since, but Berners-Lee’s basic thoughts on what a website should be still resonate nearly 30 years later.

9.eBay

Amazon may run the world’s biggest online store today, but credit eBay for popularizing the idea of an open marketplace for buyers and sellers. eBay, which began life in 1995 as AuctionWeb, forever altered the way the world passed along and monetized used goods. And it paved the way for modern e-tailers like Etsy, which lets anyone sell their crafts or run a small business online. Amazon may be where we turn for paper towels, groceries and last minute holiday gifts, but it’s still eBay people scan to find vintage or scarce items, from rare pairs of sneakers to sold out iPhones.

8. Drudge Report

Matt Drudge’s eponymous “Report” is most famous for breaking the Monica Lewinsky story, but the site rarely posts news of its own. Instead, it serves as a conservative-leaning news aggregator, pointing to articles from across the web and putting an ideologically-spun (and irresistibly clicky) headline on them. Drudge’s barebones web design has changed little over the years, serving as a sort of living memorial to the days of dial-up Internet. But the site remains massively influential (and massively read) in Washington, D.C., influencing the agenda of Beltway movers and shakers.

7. Yahoo

Years before “Google” became a verb, there was Yahoo. An early effort to bring order to the chaos of the Internet, Yahoo served as a sort of Yellow Pages for the web, with human editors selecting links to news stories and other sites. Google’s relevance-based search algorithms eventually resonated more strongly with users, plunging Yahoo toward irrelevance as its raison d’être dwindled. But Yahoo’s core idea — that something should help Internet users cut through all the noise to find a bit of signal — remains an essential tenet of online information curation.

6.Craigslist

Long before finding a date by swiping your smartphone, browsing apartments on Trulia, or searching for part-time work through Indeed, there was Craigslist. The site remains a popular destination for real estate and job listings in 2017, with more than 60 million monthly U.S. users. Craigslist started as an emailed list of San Francisco-based events in 1995, which founder Craig Newmark expanded into a classified ads site and online forum. Its influences extend beyond the web, too: many attribute a significant part of the newspaper industry’s decline to the shift from print ads to online ones.

5.YouTube

In retrospect, watching videos on the Internet seems obvious — monitors are basically tiny flatscreen TVs, after all. But it took YouTube to show the world that anyone could be a video star. Just as early blogging platforms made everyone a critic, YouTube (followed by Instagram and Snapchat) turned anyone with a smartphone into a video publisher. The impact has been immeasurable, both for better and worse: YouTube makes it easy to entertain ourselves, learn new skills or keep in touch with far-flung friends. But it can also be a haven for invective and hate speech, a problem the Alphabet-owned site continues to grapple with.

4.Facebook

A website founded by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the early 2000s as a way to profile Harvard classmates has become the world’s largest social network. More than two billion users frequent the platform monthly, eclipsing alternate platforms like Tencent’s WeChat (968 million), Instagram (700 million) and Twitter (328 million). But the site has also evolved from a way to stay in touch with friends and relatives, to a medium through which both news and propaganda flow freely, mingling in ways that often make it difficult to tell one from the other. Facebook has pledged to do battle with so-called “fake news,” and says it’s refining the site’s processes to mitigate the spread of misinformation as well as clickbait.

3. Wikipedia

While your high school teachers and college professors may have taught you to doubt Wikipedia’s reliability, its rise to prominence since launching in 2001 is undeniable. With five million English entries, Wikipedia has become the de facto Internet encyclopedia. That said, Wikipedia’s openness — arguably what’s fueled its omnipresence — is also its biggest handicap. Since Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone with Internet access, the platform is susceptible to bias or outright inaccuracy. But that hasn’t hindered its popularity: according to Amazon’s analytics site Alexa, it’s the fifth most trafficked website globally.

2. Amazon

Amazon in 2017 is a retail and technology behemoth, selling everything from salad dressing to server space. But it began as a humble online bookseller, paving the way for all the e-commerce sites that followed. The company may not have pioneered concepts like browsing a digital “store” or filling up an online “shopping cart,” but the site helped e-tail break into the mainstream, and at a time when many consumers weren’t comfortable plugging credit card numbers into browsers. Amazon accounts for just 5% of U.S. retail sales today, but its market share is expected to surge as traditional players’ revenue dwindles.

1. Google

Since its arrival in 1998, Google has become so ingrained in our vernacular that Merriam Webster added it to the dictionary as a transitive verb. The multinational tech firm has become synonymous with the notion of researching anything — you don’t “look something up online,” you “Google” it. And it remains the web’s most pervasive search tool, accounting for 97% of the mobile search engine market and 79% of desktop search engine use, according to recent data from Net Market Share.

This article originally appeared on Time.