Commentators started to refer to the 'internet as an OS' around 1999, with the start-up WebOS Inc publicising the so-called web operating system.
In 2002, Tim O'Reilly wrote about "the emergent internet operating system" as an open collection of web services.
At the time, an O'Reilly Research report documented emerging technologies such as weblogs, instant messaging between people and programs, file sharing, grid computing and web spidering. It said these were the building blocks of the web OS.
