Quick Answer: The World Wide Web is a global interconnected information system that enables content sharing over the Internet. It facilitates access to documents and other web resources according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN in 1989 and opened to the public in 1993. It was conceived as a "universal linked information system". Documents and other media content are made available to the network through web servers and can be accessed by programs such as web browsers. Servers and resources on the World Wide Web are identified and located through a character string called a uniform resource locator. The original and still very common document type is a web page formatted in Hypertext Markup Language. This markup language supports plain text, images, embedded video and audio contents, and scripts that implement complex user interaction.