After the invention of the web in 1989-90 by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research), Geneva, Switzerland, and the release of the first browser, Mosaic (the ancestor of Netscape), in November 1993, the internet began spreading, first in the U.S. because of investments made by the government, then in North America, and then worldwide. Because the web was easy to use, linking documents and pages with hyperlinks, the internet could now be used by anyone, and not only by computer literate users. There were 100 million internet users in December 1997, with one million new users per month, and 300 million internet users in December 2000. Why did the internet spread in North America first? The U.S. and Canada were leading the way in computer science and communication technology, and a connection to the internet – mainly through a phone line - was much cheaper than in most countries. In Europe, avid internet users needed to navigate the web at night - when phone rates by the minute were cheaper - to cut their expenses. In 1998, some users in France, Italy and Germany launched a movement to boycott the internet one day per week, for internet providers and phone companies to set up a special monthly rate. This action paid off, and providers began to offer "internet rates". Christiane Jadelot, a French engineer at INaLF-Nancy (INaLF: National Institute for the French Language), wrote in July 1998: "I began to really use the internet in 1994, with a browser called Mosaic. I found it a very useful way of improving my knowledge of computers, linguistics, literature... everything. I was finding the best and the worst, but as a discerning user, I had to sort it all out, and make choices. I particularly liked the software for email, file transfers and dial-up connections. At that time I had problems with a program called Paradox and character sets that I couldn't use. I tried my luck and threw out a question in a specialist news group. I got answers from all over the world. Everyone seemed to want to solve my problem!" The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in October 1994 to develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) for the web, for example specifications for markup languages (HTML, XML, and others), and to act as a forum for information, commerce, communication and collective understanding.