In the Web’s earliest years (1990–1994), “APIs” weren’t yet a mainstream product—but HTTP endpoints already needed protection. This chapter traces how rate limiting quietly became a security and business tool as early servers faced scarce resources, buggy clients, and the first automated traffic.
From password-protected directories to CGI scripts that behaved like proto-APIs, the early Web (1990–1994) experimented with access control long before the industry standardized API keys and developer portals.
In the early 1990s, the Web had HTTP requests and shared documents—but not “web APIs” or delegated authorization. This chapter traces the authorization reality of 1990–1994 and explains how those constraints foreshadowed OAuth 2.0.
Before OAuth 1.0 existed, the early Web (1990–1994) made key decisions—stateless HTTP, Basic Auth, CGI, and cookies—that eventually demanded delegated authorization for APIs.
A look back at 1990–1994, when the Web’s earliest HTTP patterns—resources, links, forms, and simple request/response behavior—quietly established the API ideas that later powered Facebook Platform APIs and the social graph.
From URLs and early HTTP methods to CGI and the first dynamic web interactions, the 1990–1994 era laid the interface patterns that later powered Twitter API integrations and modern social platform APIs.
Flickr’s API arrived much later, but the rules it relies on—URLs, HTTP semantics, content types, and server-side gateways—were forged in the Web’s first years. This chapter traces the 1990–1994 interface patterns that made media-sharing integrations possible.
Google Maps API arrived much later, but its DNA is visible in the early Web (1990–1994): HTTP’s uniform interface, server-side programs exposed through URLs, and the first patterns for turning data into interactive experiences—including location-based pages.
Between 1990 and 1994, the Web’s simplest building blocks—URLs, HTTP requests, and server-side gateway scripts—quietly formed the earliest “public web APIs.” This chapter traces how those early interfaces made proto-mashups possible long before the term existed.
Between 1990 and 1994, the Web’s earliest HTTP interactions weren’t called “APIs,” yet they introduced resource identity, uniform operations, and stateless requests—the same building blocks REST would later formalize.