| Introduction | The World Wide Web The Web is the most significant development in communication since television, and it probably will turn out to have even more impact than that medium. The Web provides users unprecedented access to, and some control over, information. Throughout the history of mass media, consumers have depended on disseminators of information to provide what the public wanted and/or needed to know. Choices of sources were usually fairly limited, with only a few newspapers, radio stations and TV stations available in any given locality. The advent of cable TV and direct satellite TV increased choices in that medium, but the selection is still limited for most people. With the Web, however, a consumer's choices for channels of news and information are nearly unlimited. That fact -- combined with the Web's ease of use, declining prices for computer equipment, increasing numbers of Internet service providers and increased availability of high-speed Internet connections -- has meant a significant increase in the number of people using the Web. One downside of the Web, however, is its size. Just how big is the Web? No one really knows. Even the best estimates are rough guesses. It is impossible to determine an exact size because some pages and sites are added every day while others disappear daily. To give you some idea of the Web's immensity, here are two fairly recent estimates.
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