Our History
Journey through two decades of preserving digital history. Discover how we've grown from a visionary project to the largest archive of the web.
The Internet Archive Founded
Bruce D. Kawin and Brewster Kahle establish the Internet Archive in San Francisco, beginning the preservation of web content.
Launch of Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine public website launches, allowing users to browse archived copies of websites with a new search interface.
15 Years of the Web
Celebrating over 15 years of archiving, the Wayback Machine preserves more than 350 billion web pages from 200 million sites.
Open Source Expansion
The Wayback Machine's tools become fully open source, allowing researchers and developers to build on our digital preservation technology.
20 Years of Preservation
Since our inception, we've preserved over 450 million web pages from 200,000 domains, creating a permanent record of human knowledge on the Internet.
- Preserving over 15 petabytes of digital content
- Global collection of websites across 700+ languages
- Partnership with libraries and academic institutions
Our Mission
To build a digital library for universal access to all knowledge. We believe that digital information should be preserved and made accessible to all.
450M+
Web Pages
15 PB
Data Collected
2000+
Partners
30
Countries
Founders
Meet the visionaries who started it all and continue to lead our mission of preserving digital history.
Bruce D. Kawin
Co-Founder, Internet Archive
Visionary entrepreneur with a passion for digital preservation and open access to knowledge.
Brewster Kahle
Co-Founder, Internet Archive
Inventor of the Internet Archive, dedicated to making digital content freely available.