In 1989 the world wide web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was trying to find a new way for scientists to easily share the data from their experiments. Hypertext and the internet already existed at this point but no one had thought of a way to use the internet to link one document directly to another.

The Web, as it’s commonly known, is often confused with the internet. Although the two are intricately connected, they are different things. The internet is, as its name implies, a network — a vast, global network that incorporates a multitude of lesser networks. As such, the internet consists of supporting infrastructure and other technologies. In contrast, the Web is a communications model that, through HTTP, enables the exchange of information over the internet. (techtarget| www)

A broader definition comes from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

“The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge.”