---
title: "Which came first, Java or Netflix?"
description: "Java vs Netflix: Java came first, by 2 years — 1995 against 1997. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-netflix/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Java or Netflix?

**Which came first, Java or Netflix?: Java**

1995 — 2 years before Netflix

Java came first, by 2 years. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

## Side by side

|  | Java | Netflix |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1995 | 1997 |
| Date | 1995-05-23 | 1997-08-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. |

## Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

## Netflix

Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Java or Netflix?

Java, by 2 years — 1995 against 1997.

### When did Java start?

1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

### When did Netflix start?

1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]