The Internet

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What is the Internet?

Before we go any further with this orientation, we need to have a brief discussion about the Internet.  People often confuse the World Wide Web with the Internet.  The Internet is much larger and older than just the Web. 

Basically, the Internet is a collection of computer networks all over the world that communicate with each other.  It was created in the late 1960's by the Department of Defense.   

For a long time the Internet was only regularly used by "computer geeks" and people who were very comfortable with computers in technology because the computer interfaces were so difficult to learn.  For example, email is one of the oldest technologies on the Internet and has been around since the 1970's.  However, it was more difficult to use than email is today. 

The Internet really took off with the development of the World Wide Web or "the Web."  The World Wide Web was created in 1989.  It is the part of the Internet that allows users to move around or "browse" various webpages by clicking on hyperlinks.  The Web was much easier to use and so ordinary people started going online.  It became even more popular when people could start loading a variety of media on the Internet, such as music and videos.  Today it is a major force in our society.

Now that you know a little bit about the history of the Internet, let's look at Internet search tools.  We'll start with search engines.