The World Wide Web (WWW), or simply the web, is a way of accessing information through the use of a medium called the internet. The internet is a huge network of networks, a networking infrastructure. Its purpose is to connect billions of devices together, all around the globe, so that they can communicate with one another. Information travels through the internet in a rich variety of languages, called protocols, that allow different devices to speak the same tongue in order to share content.

The web is an information-sharing model, built on top of the internet, which employs the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as a basis for data communication. The web, therefore, is just one of several different ways information can be exchanged over the internet; email, instant messaging, news groups, and so on, all rely on different protocols.