How the Web Won: The Inside Story of How a Motley Crew of Outsiders Hijacked the Information Superhighway and Struck a Blow for Human Freedom

by Ken McCarthy

They didn't follow the rules. They wrote them.

The messy true story that Silicon Valley hates.

This book is what would have happened if Michael Lewis and David Foster Wallace wrote the story of the Web’s formative years..



"A compulsively readable account of how the Internet became what it is today. McCarthy's writing is vivid, sometimes startling, and readable as a thriller. I suspect it will stand a classic." - Grevel Lindop
Poet and academic. Professor Emeritus of English Literature, University of Manchester

"Fascinating, funny, and wildly entertaining." - Jonathan Mizel
Online business entrepreneur & thought leader since 1993

"An epic tale, well and conversationally told, offering deep-but-accessible insight into the evolution of our information superhighway.“ - The Chronogram Magazine, Anne Pyburn Craig

"I doubt if anyone has had a greater impact on how people persuade, influence, and sell online than Ken. God knows how many billions his alumni have made." - Drayton Bird
Former Worldwide Creative Director & Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Direct

"Like getting a peek at the early side of the Big Bang…" - Steve O'Keefe
Author of Publicity on the Internet, personally tutored Jeff Bezos on how to sell books online

At the start of 1993, no one had heard of the World Wide Web, but by the middle of 1995 it had turned Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the media world upside down.Was the Web a planned resistance on the part of a handful of digital rebels or was its unlikely and unexpected ascendance one of the happiest accidents in human history? Or a mixture of both?

How the Web Won reveals many previously untold details behind the dramatic emergence of the World Wide Web and how it came along just in time to thwart the last step of Bill Gates' plan for permanent domination of all the world's personal computers.

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

Time Magazine (March, 2014) credited Ken McCarthy with being the person who had the fundamental insight that made it possible to transform the Internet from a non-commercial technical platform to the world's biggest marketplace and publishing platform.

His insight? That clicks had a commercial value and that their value was variable depending on audience. This insight is literally the foundation that made online businesses like Google and Facebook and millions of others possible.

In addition to this contribution, Ken was also:

1) the first to publish an article about email as a marketing tool in a marketing industry publication (1994)

2) one of the primary pioneers of the banner ad (1994)

3) early pioneer of auto-responder marketing (1996)

4) early pioneer of pay-per-click marketing (2001)

5) introduced "push button" audio to the Internet (2002), the foundation of the podcasting industry

6) early pioneer of practical online video marketing (2005), though he published the first article on the subject in 1994, and

7) early pioneer of mobile marketing (2008)

When Brian Kurtz picked the top living marketing people on the planet to honor the memory of Direct Marketing Hall of Fame legend Marty Edelson, he chose Jay Abraham, Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, Greg Renker and Ken, along with Ken's student Perry Marshall, to represent the very best of the best in all mediums - direct mail, infomercials, catalog sales and Internet.

All that and a phenomenal educator too.

Ken organized and sponsored the first conference ever held on the subject of business on the World Wide Web, way back in 1994.

In 2002, when everyone else in the market had shut down after 9/11, and the Dotcom Crash, and declared that opportunities on the Internet "over", Ken launched the most important and influential Internet marketing seminar series of all time: The System Seminar.

Thousands of students attended over the years from twenty-three countries and five continents and many went on to become leaders in the industry.

In the System Seminar, Ken laid down the fundamentals of Internet marketing still used today: opt-in, email follow up, A/B split testing, knowing your conversion rates, multiple forms of media (text, photos, audio, video), "virtual" seminars, and high quality ad copy.

For more info visit: KenMcCarthy.com