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What is the World Wide Web?

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Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
The World Wide Web (WWW or “the Web”) is a system for publishing and accessing linked information over the Internet. It’s the part of the Internet you use when you open a web page in a browser.

Key points
- Core idea: documents (web pages) formatted in HTML are stored on web servers and retrieved by clients (web browsers) using the HTTP or HTTPS protocol. Pages are identified by URLs.
- Main technologies: HTML (structure), CSS (presentation), JavaScript (behavior), HTTP/HTTPS (request/response), and web servers/browsers.
- How it works (high level): you enter a URL or click a link → your browser sends an HTTP request to the server that hosts the resource → the server responds with HTML/CSS/JS → the browser renders the page.
- Hyperlinks: pages can link to other pages, creating a global, interlinked information space.
- Origin: invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (1989–1990). The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) now helps develop web standards.
- Web vs. Internet: the Internet is the global network of computers and infrastructure (routers, physical links, TCP/IP). The Web is one of many services that run over the Internet.
- Modern web: includes static sites, dynamic web applications, APIs, search engines, secure connections (HTTPS), and web standards for accessibility and mobile devices.

In short: the Web is the distributed system of linked documents and applications you access through browsers, built on open standards and running atop the Internet.