World Wide Web (WWW)

World Wide Web (WWW), the leading information retrieval service of the Internet (the worldwide computer network).

The Web gives users access to a vast array of mass media and content—via the deep web, the dark web, and the commonly accessible surface web—that is connected by means of hypertext or hypermedia links—i.e., hyperlinks, electronic connections that link related pieces of information in order to allow a user easy access to them.

Hypertext allows the user to select a word or phrase from text and thereby access other documents that contain additional information pertaining to that word or phrase. Hypermedia documents feature links to images, sounds, animations, and movies.

The Web operates within the Internet’s basic client-server format; servers are computer programs that store and transmit documents to other computers on the network when asked to, while clients are programs that request documents from a server as the user asks for them.

Browser software allows users to view the retrieved documents. Special browsers and platforms such as Tor allow users to do so anonymously.

A hypertext document with its corresponding text and hyperlinks is written in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and is assigned an online address called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).