ebserver.    [edit] History  The first web server owes its origin to Tim Berners-Lee when as part of a new project  to his employer CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). In 1989 he wrote two programs which led to the implementation of the first web server. The Application server first came up in the 1990's.  It can be said that a Web server is a subset of an application server. Application servers and web servers are beginning to blur into each other with the expansion of the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies.  In most instances currently, software is hosted onweb servers, and then downloaded to the local hard drive, where it is installed on the local computer. In the new model that fuses the web server and application server , the software would be hosted online and the user could access it and use it as needed, generally, at a lower rate than if he or she were to purchase the software new.