That's the web, not the internet. The internet existed continuously for over 2 decades before the web was created (although the general public didn't know about it).
"Existed": had actual users. (The US government started funding continuous research into packet switching in 1960.)
Also, if Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) hadn't created the web, someone else would probably have used the internet to create something like it in a few years whereas if the US hadn't invested heavily in packet-switching in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a much longer interval of time probably would've gone by before someone created anything capable of enabling an ordinary programmer or sysadmin like TBL was to create something like the web.
"Ordinary": not able to command a lot of capital or labor.
TBL persuaded his boss to let him create the web during working hours. His boss agreed largely because he thought that the project would be a good way for them to evaluate a new computer the boss had bought (by NeXT). In other words, the existence of the internet (which in turn enabled the existence of a community of programmers interested in donating code to innovative projects, a community that got a very big boost when Stallman started publishing on the internet in 1983) enabled the creation of the web without any serious commitment from government, corporate executives and people with lots of money.
In contrast, the creation of a network that allowed an ordinary programmer to recruit open-source contributions to his project and to easily deploy server and client software of his own design required massive outlays of capital over 3 decades. It easy for such massive outlays to go awry in various ways. The US government avoided its going awry. In contrast, the French government retained so much centralized control over Minitel that at no point in Minitel's history could an ordinary programmer have used Minitel to create something as innovative as the web.
(It wasn't until the internet had been almost completely turned over to the private sector in the early 1990s, for example, that any software started to track users more than absolutely necessary for the operation of the network: in the early 1990s, anyone could send and email with president@whitehouse.gov in the "From" field. The reason it worked that way was to maximize anonymity of senders. There was no way for the sender of an email in the early 1990s to know whether the recipient read it, the reason again being a desire among the designers and maintainers of the infrastructure to maximize privacy.)
"Existed": had actual users. (The US government started funding continuous research into packet switching in 1960.)
Also, if Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) hadn't created the web, someone else would probably have used the internet to create something like it in a few years whereas if the US hadn't invested heavily in packet-switching in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a much longer interval of time probably would've gone by before someone created anything capable of enabling an ordinary programmer or sysadmin like TBL was to create something like the web.
"Ordinary": not able to command a lot of capital or labor.
TBL persuaded his boss to let him create the web during working hours. His boss agreed largely because he thought that the project would be a good way for them to evaluate a new computer the boss had bought (by NeXT). In other words, the existence of the internet (which in turn enabled the existence of a community of programmers interested in donating code to innovative projects, a community that got a very big boost when Stallman started publishing on the internet in 1983) enabled the creation of the web without any serious commitment from government, corporate executives and people with lots of money.
In contrast, the creation of a network that allowed an ordinary programmer to recruit open-source contributions to his project and to easily deploy server and client software of his own design required massive outlays of capital over 3 decades. It easy for such massive outlays to go awry in various ways. The US government avoided its going awry. In contrast, the French government retained so much centralized control over Minitel that at no point in Minitel's history could an ordinary programmer have used Minitel to create something as innovative as the web.
(It wasn't until the internet had been almost completely turned over to the private sector in the early 1990s, for example, that any software started to track users more than absolutely necessary for the operation of the network: in the early 1990s, anyone could send and email with president@whitehouse.gov in the "From" field. The reason it worked that way was to maximize anonymity of senders. There was no way for the sender of an email in the early 1990s to know whether the recipient read it, the reason again being a desire among the designers and maintainers of the infrastructure to maximize privacy.)