Libero (English: "Free") is an Italian

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...

owned by and founded by Infostrada in 1994 as a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

to assist users in browsing the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, which at the time still had a fee, and in configuring an

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

. Alongside

Virgilio.it Virgilio was the first Web portal in Italy. Born in 1996 as a search engine and Web directory manually edited by its own editors (Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in ...

, a web portal created in 1996, and the two most widely read newspapers, '' Corriere della Sera'' and ''

la Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnol ...

'', Libero is a household name within Italian

online news An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the electronic publishing, online version of a newspaper, either as a stand-alone publication or as the online version of a printed periodical literature, periodical. Goin ...

. Alongside Virgilio, Libero was the local-web complementation for large international sites like

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

among websites attracting the most online traffic in Italy. In May 2007, Libero was among the top 30 brand of the month in Italy, with over 10.5 million unique visitors, ahead of

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

, ,

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

, the

Italian Wikipedia The Italian Wikipedia ( it, Wikipedia in italiano) is the Italian-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was created on May 11, 2001 and first edited on June 11, 2001. As of , , it has articles and more than registered accounts. It is t ...

, and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

, and behind only

and

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

Windows Live Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were expose ...

. By June 2010, it was listed 8th among the top ten websites generting the most unique users in Italy at over 13 million, behind Google, Facebook,

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

, MSN/Windows Live/

Microsoft Bing Microsoft Bing (commonly known as Bing) is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety ...

, Virgilio, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, and ahead of Wikipedia and

Blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

. Libero News was listed 4th among the top 10 news websites at over 5 million uniques visitors, behind ''la Repubblica'', ''Corriere della Sera'', and

TGcom ''TGcom'' was an Italian news website owned by Mediaset, launched on March 8, 2001. The website contained mainly Italian and international news coverage, as well as political and entertainment news. TGCOM was closely linked to its sister departm ...

, and ahead of '' La Stampa'' (La Stampa.it), Quotidiano.net, Virgilio Notizie, Google News, ''

Il Fatto Quotidiano ''il Fatto Quotidiano'' (English: "The Daily Fact") is an Italian daily newspaper owned by ''Editoriale Il Fatto SpA'' published in Rome, Italy. It was founded on 23 September 2009 and was edited by Antonio Padellaro until 2015, when Marco Trav ...

'', ', ''

Il Post ''Il Post'' is an Italian on-line daily newspaper, founded and directed in 2010 by Luca Sofri. The editorial staff includes journalists Arianna Cavallo, Francesco Costa, Luca Misculin, Elena Zacchetti, Giulia Balducci and Emanuele Menietti, as w ...

'', and ''

Linkiesta ''Linkiesta'' is an independent Italian online newspaper of investigative journalism, in-depth analysis and commentary. It was launched on 31 January 2011 and, from 24 September 2019, the editor in chief is Christian Rocca. The first editor in ...

'' (Linkiesta.it).

References

External links

* Internet properties established in 1994 Italian websites Webmail Web portals {{web-portal-stub

See also

References

External links