--- title: IMDb Is Turning 25. How Is It Older Than Web Browers? description: The Internet Movie Database was founded 25 years ago, on Oct. 17, 1990 canonical: https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-10-16T16:00:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:06:46.662Z article:section: History og:title: IMDb Is Turning 25. How Is It Older Than Web Browers? og:description: The Internet Movie Database was founded 25 years ago, on Oct. 17, 1990 og:url: https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta15bb363dc71d9aa/6988679e3c1639068e45a28e/imdb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: IMDb's 20th Anniversary Party og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: IMDb Is Turning 25. How Is It Older Than Web Browers? twitter:description: The Internet Movie Database was founded 25 years ago, on Oct. 17, 1990 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta15bb363dc71d9aa/6988679e3c1639068e45a28e/imdb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How IMDb Can Be Older Than the First Web Browser  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 16, 2015 4:00 PM UTC  IMDB's Col Needham at IMDb's 20th Anniversary Party at CAA on Sept. 28, 2010, in Los Angeles IMDB's Col Needham at IMDb's 20th Anniversary Party at CAA on Sept. 28, 2010, in Los AngelesTodd Williamson—WireImage/Getty  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 16, 2015 4:00 PM UTC Here’s a riddle: the Internet Movie Database, the now-ubiquitous website that tracks pretty much every speck of info about movies and TV, will celebrate its 25th birthday on Saturday. But the 25th anniversary of [the proposal that gave birth to the World Wide Web](http://time.com/3575159/tim-berners-lee/) won’t come around till November. That means that the website is older than the web. Huh? The answer is actually relatively straightforward. As IMDb’s founder Col Needham [explained](http://www.imdb.com/help/show%5Fleaf?history) in 2010, it was on Oct. 17, 1990 that he “published a series of scripts which allowed you to search a lists \[sic\] of credits collected by a wonderful USENET group.” Web browsers, which were how many non-experts first encountered the Internet, were still on their way, but the Internet had been around for years at that point. The Usenet system of discussion groups (later [described](http://time.com/vault/issue/1993-12-06/page/64/) by TIME as “a bulletin-board system that began as a competitor to the Internet but has been largely subsumed by it”) allowed tech-savvy people with similar interests to communicate. Needham’s interest was movies. As he would later [explain](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/19/business/la-fi-himi-needham-20130120) to the Los Angeles _Times_, he had long kept track of the details about every movie he watched, and later began to compile lists of actresses and actors and their work. In 1990 he made his database public so others could search it. The database moved to the web a few years later, and was [incorporated](https://web.archive.org/web/19961219234530/http://us.imdb.com/imdb%5Fltd) in 1996. The early IMDb wasn’t exactly the super-complete site today’s users are accustomed to, but it was pretty impressive nonetheless: users could search several fields that are still in use today, like character name and production company, or browse curated features like a user-selected list of the top 250 movies and a column (written in Comic Sans) called “The WASHED-UPdate” about stars of the ’70s and ’80s. (You can browse a 1996 version of IMDb.com using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine [here](https://web.archive.org/web/19961219232801/http://us.imdb.com/).) By 1998, TIME [dubbed](http://time.com/vault/issue/1998-08-03/page/73/) the “astonishing” site “the most awesome movie database you’ll ever peruse.” **_Read more:_** [_4 Things You Might Not Have Known About the World Wide Web’s Inventor_](http://time.com/3575159/tim-berners-lee/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/"},"headline":"How IMDb Can Be Older Than the First Web Browser","datePublished":"2015-10-16T16:00:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:06:46.662Z","description":"The Internet Movie Database was founded 25 years ago, on Oct. 17, 1990","url":"https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/","keywords":["Technology","Tech","Internet","movies","Website"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta15bb363dc71d9aa/6988679e3c1639068e45a28e/imdb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta15bb363dc71d9aa/6988679e3c1639068e45a28e/imdb.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"IMDb's 20th Anniversary Party","caption":"IMDb's 20th Anniversary Party","creditText":"Todd Williamson—WireImage/Getty","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/technology/","name":"Technology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4068036/imdb-history-25th-anniversary/","name":"How IMDb Can Be Older Than the First Web Browser"}}]}] ```