I am Lou Montulli and I invented website cookies. Ask me anything!

Hi Reddit! I’m Lou Montulli (u/montulli) and I’m a founding engineer of Netscape, web cookie inventor, and co-author of the first web browsers. I will be happy to share my experiences from the early days of building the Web. Together with the people behind the Hidden Heroes project, I’ll be answering your questions!

Before we dive into AMA, take a look at my story on Hidden Heroes. Hidden Heroes is a project that features people who shaped technology: https://hiddenheroes.netguru.com/lou-montulli

Lou and the Hidden Heroes team

Proof: Here's my proof!

Edit: Thank you for all your questions! We're finishing for today but no worries, we'll be answering them together with Lou.

We're grateful for all the fruitful discussions! 💚

Hidden Heroes and Lou Montulli

Comments: 897 • Responses: 8  • Date: 

Slagothor1115 karma

Before I ask a question, do you accept my cookie policy?

ACCEPT MORE INFO

Hidden_Heroes281 karma

Ok, you’ve got us here! But only if you have a legitimate interest! :)

neonflannel369 karma

A simple question. Why the name "cookies"?

Hidden_Heroes580 karma

Thanks, I expected this one! It’s based on a fortune cookie, a message wrapped in a container. The name “cookies” comes from a software trick from an old operating systems manual I read a few years earlier, a technique for passing information back and forth between the user and the system. For some reason, the small piece of data exchanged had been called a “magic cookie.” Inspired by that earlier model, sketched out an architecture for a web-based “cookie” that would give the medium a sense of memory without compromising privacy.

Lou

scrappyloot79 karma

Was any cookie originally readable by any website or were they protected since the beginning?

Hidden_Heroes109 karma

The original design limited cookies to just a single website, the one that is being sent by the HTTP request.

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Lou

Hidden_Heroes49 karma

Thank you for all your questions! We're finishing for today but no worries, we'll be answering them together with Lou.

We're grateful for all the fruitful discussions! 💚

Hidden Heroes and Lou Montulli

RedUser0312 karma

What are your thoughts on the state of the internet today? Especially with the internet being dominated by only a handful of major companies, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc

Hidden_Heroes34 karma

Browser competition seems healthy with 3 major companies competing and supporting the web, with much of it going back in to open source projects.
Social networking seems like a mess to me, with hard walls and no interoperability between networks, companies are trying to use the network effect to create monopolies on their social network users.
Lou

_the_meaning_of_life1 karma

What was your inspiration for cookies?

Hidden_Heroes3 karma

Prior to cookies, using the web was a bit like talking to someone with Alzheimer's disease. Each interaction would result in having to introduce yourself again, and again, and again.
Cookies is the solution to the webs lack of memory.
A bit more about it was written in this blog post: https://montulli.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-reasoning-behind-web-cookies.html

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Lou