[2] IGS was started on February 2, 1992, by Tim Casey, Chris Chisolm, and Mark Okada, working at the University of New Mexico, and until April 5, 1993, continued at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Francisco (with an additional server at The Pasteur Institute, France); it was the first server of its kind.
[3][4][5] After its initial inception, some of its members helped to improve the server by writing software with a graphical interface; and thus IGS was born.
Leaving the UC servers in 1993, IGS continued at the University of Pennsylvania for a year until being bought by the Korean ISP nuri.net in 1994.
In 1995, the Japanese company NKB Inc., a partner of nuri.net, acquired IGS, and created a separate department, named "Pandanet" in 1996, with Mark Okada as manager.
[6] As of 2014, Online Go Server (OGS) handles both real-time and turn-based games[7] straight from one's web-browser.