---
title: "Which came first, Windows or the World Wide Web?"
description: "Windows vs the World Wide Web: Windows came first, by 4 years — 1985 against 1989. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-world-wide-web/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Windows or the World Wide Web?

**Which came first, Windows or the World Wide Web?: Windows**

1985 — 4 years before the World Wide Web

Windows came first, by 4 years. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

## Side by side

|  | Windows | the World Wide Web |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1985 | 1989 |
| Date | 1985-11-20 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0. | Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. |

## Windows

Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, twenty-two months after the Macintosh, and it was not an operating system — it was a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS, and remained so until Windows NT in 1993 and the consumer transition with Windows XP in 2001. Version 1.0 could not even overlap windows: they tiled, because Apple's legal position on overlapping windows was unresolved.

## the World Wide Web

Berners-Lee circulated his proposal in March 1989, built the first browser and server by the end of 1990, and CERN put the software into the public domain in 1993. The Web is twenty years younger than the internet: the internet is the network, the Web is one service running on it, and email and file transfer both predate the Web by decades. The first website went live in December 1990 and is still online.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Windows or the World Wide Web?

Windows, by 4 years — 1985 against 1989.

### When did Windows start?

1985. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.

### When did the World Wide Web start?

1989. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN.

## Related pages

- [Microsoft or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-windows/)
- [Microsoft or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [Apple or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-windows/)
- [Apple or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-windows/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [email or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/)
- [email or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [the Macintosh or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-windows/)
- [the Macintosh or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [Windows or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-youtube/)
- [the World Wide Web or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/world-wide-web-vs-youtube/)

## Sources

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