The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables the sharing and accessing of content over the Internet through user- friendly means designed for a wide audience beyond just IT specialists
. It consists of a vast collection of interconnected documents and other resources linked by hyperlinks, accessible via web browsers using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
. The Web was invented in 1989 by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, with the goal of creating a "universal linked information system" to facilitate easy sharing of information among scientists and the public
. It was made publicly available in 1993 and has since become the dominant platform for information retrieval on the Internet
. Key components of the Web include:
- Web pages formatted primarily in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which can contain text, images, videos, audio, and scripts
- Hyperlinks that connect pages and resources, allowing users to navigate seamlessly between related content
- Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that uniquely identify and locate resources on the Web
- Web browsers , software applications that request, retrieve, and display web pages to users
- Web servers , computers that store and serve web pages to browsers upon request
The World Wide Web operates on top of the Internet, which is the global network of interconnected computers. While the Internet provides the infrastructure for data transmission, the Web is a system of linked documents and media accessed through the Internet using protocols like HTTP
. In summary, the World Wide Web is the global collection of publicly accessible web pages and resources linked by hyperlinks, enabling users worldwide to access, share, and interact with information via web browsers over the Internet