Gore honored at Webbys

The Webby Awards gave former Vice President Al Gore a vote of confidence with its lifetime achievement award.

Gore, as survivors of the 2000 presidential election may recall, spent much of that campaign weathering ridicule over a supposed claim that he'd "invented" the Internet. (Neither he nor the reporter who first questioned Gore's Internet development resume--now my colleague at CNET News.com, Declan McCullagh--used the term. Gore claimed to have "created" it.)

"There is no politician who has done more for the Internet's development than Al Gore," said Webby Awards inventor Tiffany Shlain. "We wanted to honor him for three decades of work and set the record straight with respect to his contribution."

Gore will collect his award from Vint Cerf, whose Internet-inventing credentials are less controversial.

Others leaving New York with Webby Awards will include Craigslist inventor Craig Newmark; The Kleptones, credited with inventing new musical genres and online distribution methods; and Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, who invented Flickr and, along with it, an exit strategy so efficient they ought to patent it.

News.com publisher CNET won a Webby of its own, for Download.com, along with three "People's Voice" awards, voted on by more than 200,000 visitors to the Webby Awards Web site: one in the consumer electronic category, one for GameSpot, and another for Download.com.