1982: Bill Porter, a physicist, inventor and entrepreneur, develops VAX-based back-end technology that will later be used to launch the ETrade.com Web site.
1983: The company launches its first online trade over a network via CompuServe.
1992: ETrade begins offering online brokerage services directly to individual investors through several online services.
1996: The company launches the ETrade.com Web site. Shares of ETrade Group go public.
1998: ETrade.com rearchitects to a three-tiered system -- Web front end, middleware, database back end.
2001: The company begins migration to Linux/Intel servers from Sun Solaris.
2004: ETrade wins Keynote Performance Awards for online trading for "best transaction speed" and "best transaction reliability." Company considers further migrations to open-source for its middleware and database.