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The Internet makes it possible for people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds — regardless of geographic boundaries and time zones to connect anytime, anywhere. It has come a long way since its beginnings in 1950 to become a powerful resource for communicating, learning, growth, innovation, productivity and so much more.

Alan Turing — an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist, who is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) questioned whether machines could think. In 1969, the Internet was born when University of California — Los Angeles and Stanford University — developed the first nodes and technological breakthroughs continued over the years. Then, in 1999, Kevin Ashton — co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Auto-ID Lab — coined the term Internet of Things (IoT) and pioneered Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID.) But the true enabler occurred with the debut of the Internet Protocol Version 6 in 2011.

Today, there are more than 5.3 billion Internet users in more than 200 countries worldwide, or 65.7% of the global population — 4.95 billion, or 61.4%, of those use social media — and the numbers grow daily.

Many things would not be possible without the Internet or Open Source Software (OSS). Together, they are driving such new areas of tech innovation as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Unarguably, the Internet changed the world and is perhaps the greatest invention of the 3rd Industrial Revolution and beginning of digital transformation. It will forever continue to shape the world. Whether people realize it or not, anyone who uses the Internet today benefits from Open Source and companies — no matter what industry — not only trust Open Source but prefer it today because it has become the best-in-breed business model for faster innovation, increased efficiency and reduced costs.

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Here are a few highlights about our community members:

Founded on January 1st, 2000, Baidu is a global leader in Internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-related services and products. With over 1.1 billion monthly active devices running Baidu mobile apps, it’s the primary platform for Internet users to access Chinese information & responds to billions of search requests from more than 100 countries and regions daily.

The company’s story began when Baidu Co-Founder, Robin Li, was awarded a U.S. patent for his initial development of the Rankdex. Rankdex is a site-scoring algorithm for search engine page rankings, making China one of only 4 countries in the world with core search engine technologies in addition to the U.S., Russia & South Korea.

Founded by 2 PhD students at Stanford University, Google would not have been possible without the invention of the Internet or the availability of Open Source Software (OSS). The company is known as the most powerful company in the world and one of the most valuable brands due to its market share, data collection & technological advantages in the field of AI.

Google got its beginnings in 1998 and became the largest subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. — one of America’s Big Five IT companies — in 2015. With more than 1 billion users, Google operates the world’s largest search engine; mapping & navigation application; email provider; office suite, video sharing platform; photo and cloud storage provider; mobile operating system; web browser; ML framework & AI Virtual Assistant (VA) provider worldwide. An Open Source pioneer, Google is one of 7 funding partners of OIN.

Microsoft — founded in 1975 by two childhood friends, Bill Gates and Paul Allen who wanted to put a PC on every desk in every home— made its name when it entered the Operating System (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. In 1985, the company released Windows. Fast forward to 1995 and Microsoft began to redefine its offerings, expanding into computer networking and the World Wide Web. The company has continued to evolve and is one of the United States’ Big Five IT companies with its most impressive achievement of making computing accessible. Microsoft joined OIN in 2018, making international headlines as it fully embraced Open Source.

OIN Community Members

Open Source Advocates | Internet

Bilibili | OIN Community Member
Naver | OIN Community Member
Baidu | OIN Community Member
Mozilla | OIN Community Member
Yahoo! | OIN Community Member
X | OIN Community Member
Meta | OIN Community Member
Dropbox | OIN Community Member

What Members are Saying

Protecting open source is critical to us, our users and to the ongoing health of the Internet. We’re proud of our new role within OIN. We’re very happy with the direction OIN has been going.  
Chris DiBonaDirector of Open SourceGoogle