the Latin American Free Trade Association in 1960, which was succeeded by the Latin American Integration Association in the 1980s. Science and technology Technology The 1990s were a revolutionary decade for digital technology. Between 1990 and 1997, household personal computer ownership in the US rose from 15% to 35%. Cell phones of the early-1990s and earlier ones were very large, lacked extra features, and were used by only a few percent of the population of even the wealthiest nations. Only a few million people used online services in 1990, and the World Wide Web, which would have a significant impact on technology for many decades, had only just been invented. The first web browser went online in 1993. By 2001, more than 50% of some Western countries had Internet access, and more than 25% had cell phone access. Electronics and communications On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan-European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. Driven by mass adoption, consumer personal computer specifications increased dramatically during the 1990s, from 512 KB RAM 12 MHz Turbo XTs in 1990, to 25–66 MHz 80486-class processor at the start of the popularization of the World Wide Web mid-decade, to over 1 GHz CPUs with close to a gigabyte of RAM by 2000. Y2K spread fear throughout the United States and eventually the world in the last half of the decade, particularly in 1999, about possible massive computer malfunctions on 1 January 2000. As a result, many people stocked up on supplies for fear of a worldwide disaster. After significant effort to upgrade systems on the part of software engineers, no failures occurred when the clocks rolled over into 2000. Advancements in computer modems, ISDN, cable modems, and DSL led to faster connections to the Internet. The first Pentium microprocessor is introduced and developed by the Intel Corporation. Email becomes popular; as a result, Microsoft acquires the popular Hotmail webmail service. Instant messaging and the buddy list feature becomes popular. AIM and ICQ are two early protocols. Businesses start to build e-commerce websites; e-commerce-only companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, AOL, and Yahoo! grow rapidly. The introduction of affordable, smaller satellite dishes and the DVB-S standard in the mid-1990s expanded satellite television services