They mean the WWW, which is really what the Internet has always been about. And yes, it was invented in Europe.

The web browser which actually made the web usable and popularized it was Mosaic.

"Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign beginning in late 1992." -- Wikipedia

Other than Linux's European origin, Europe has not produced any viable operating system or browser. It continues to rely on key software of American origin, like the rest of the world.

This is one of those "pizza was invented in New York City" arguments. Popularized and refined != invent.

The Brit Tim Berners-Lee designed the architecture, wrote the first browser and web server, and wrote the first HTML spec at CERN around 1989. Mosaic was released in like 1993 after Berners-Lee released his specs and source.

To claim the internet was invented in Europe is equally absurd.

> which is really what the Internet has always been about

Internet created 1983. WWW created 1989.

Well the Web if you prefer.

They're two different things. The Internet was invented in the US. I'm European as well, but not sure why you'd need to overreach to claim we invented the Internet.

packet based networking was invented in the US...

The internet was created by meshing many different networks together (mostly ARPANET and SFNET).

Networks which now form the backbone of the internet also existed in europe at the time, mainly in britain and france.

Yes we are all aware they are different things, I made a semantic leap because the terms are used interchangeably in common parlance. I should have known a technical forum would take me up on that.