The five websites Brits cannot do without

The top five websites were revealed in a poll for Nominet, the company that runs the .uk internet infrastructure ahead of the internet's 25th birthday, which is celebrated this month.

Almost half of those quizzed (46 per cent) said the best thing about the web was finding quick answers to questions, while a quarter (25 per cent) said that what they liked the most was finding old friends.

A further quarter of people (24 per cent) said that they used the web most to help with something that was a cause of worry.

For young people aged 18 to 24, the search for a job was higher up the list - with 28 per cent of them citing "finding a job" as the best thing the web has given them.

The survey of 2,001 adults was commissioned to celebrate the web's birthday today, marking 25 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee published the paper that served as the blueprint for the modern web.

The top five websites are:

1. Facebook (24 per cent of the vote)

2. BBC (20 per cent)

3. Amazon (9 per cent)

4. Gmail (5 per cent)

5. Yahoo! (5 per cent)

Facebook was chosen by 32 per cent of women, while for men (26 per cent) the BBC website was in the number one position.

Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet, said: "The web is such an integral part of everyday life that we simply can't live without it.

"It has changed to something beyond what even Sir Tim and his colleagues could have imagined 25 years ago, when they were looking for an easier way to share and structure information.

"The social, political and economic impact of the web makes it a story we are all part of, and to which we all contribute daily, whether that's finding the answer to a question or connecting with friends and colleagues."

The history of the internet - a timeline:

It is unlikely Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford University graduate, knew the power the web would wield and the impact it would have on society when he first presented his proposal in March 25 years ago.

Ahead of the web's birthday, here is a history of the early web:

* March 1989: Information Management: A Proposal written by Tim Berners-Lee and circulated for comments at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN.

* October 1990: Sir Tim starts work on a hypertext GUI browser+editor using the NeXTStep development environment. He makes up "WorldWideWeb" as a name for the programme and project. The machine on which he created the first webpage was NeXT Cube which is on show at the Science Museum this autumn as part of its Information Age exhibition.

* August 1991: Web software made available on the Internet via FTP.

* May 1992: Pei Wei's "Viola" GUI browser for X test version.

* February 1993: National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) releases first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X".

* April 1993: CERN's declares that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to CERN.

* May 1994: First International WWW Conference at CERN in Geneva.

* October 1994: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) founded.