DEFINITION OF THE INTERNET

The internet is defined as a global network of linked computers, servers, phones,

and smart appliances that communicate with each other using the transmission
control protocol (TCP) standard to enable the fast exchange of information and
files, along with other types of services. 
The internet is a global hub of computer networks, a network of connections
wherein users at any workstation, may with authorization, receive data from
every other system (and often interact with users working on other computers).
On the internet, a huge resource of information is accessible to people across the
world. Information in every field starting from education, science, health,
medicine, history, geography, business, news, etc. can be retrieved from
the internet. One can also download programs and software packages from the
internet. Due to the tremendous information resources the internet can provide,
it is now indispensable to every organization and personal activities.

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

The Internet came in the year 1960 with the creation of the first working model
called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency). It allowed multiple
computers to work on a single network which was their biggest achievement at
that time. ARPANET uses packet switching to communicate multiple computer
systems under a single network. In October 1969, using ARPANET first message
was transferred from one computer to another. After that technology continues
to grow. This architecture was later adopted by an educational institute for an
exchange of views among research scholars and then, it was thrown open to the
public. Since 1994, the internet has grown by leaps and bounds driven by cheaper
cost, easier to use and increase in information.
APPLICATIONS OF THE INTERNET

1. COMMUNICATION

Communication is also one of the most used applications of the Internet because
today it is very easy to talk through the Internet and today almost everyone is
communicating with each other through the Internet.

Today it is very cheap to communicate through the Internet, as compared to other

mediums, so people today are using Internet applications to communicate. There are
thousands of such Internet applications for communication, through which you can
communicate with someone else. But we will tell you about some popular
communication applications. Through these communication applications, you can
talk to anyone in many ways. For example, you can talk to someone through chat,
you can talk through voice call, you can talk through video call, etc. Examples of
some of the popular communication internet applications include: Email, Skype,
Google Meet, Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger etc.

2. JOB SEARCH

In today's digital world it is very easy to find the job of your choice. Today you can
easily find jobs related to your skills through the internet and give a direct interview
to HR. Through these internet job applications, you can find jobs for yourself sitting
at home, these job portals have all kinds of jobs for all types of people, all you have
to do is use these job applications and just send your resume. We examples of some
jobs providing internet applications include; Naukri.com, Monster.com,
Freshersworld.com, Indeed.com, Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter etc.

3. ONLINE SHOPPING

Everything is possible in today's era, in earlier times people could not even imagine
that without going to the market, anything could be bought, but in today's time, it is
possible. Today the whole world is doing online shopping through the internet.
Through these shopping applications, you can order any item of your need sitting at
home. Examples of some shopping applications are, Jumia, Konga, Amazon, Ebay etc.
4. FEEDBACK ABOUT PRODUCTS

Commercial organizations are also using the internet to gather information about the
satisfaction of existing products and market opportunities of new products. This is
usually accomplished by putting up an interactive survey application by the
organization on a WWW site on the Internet.

5. EDUCATION

Education is one of the best things that the internet can provide. There are a number
of books,  reference books, online help centers, expert`s views and other study
oriented material on  the internet that can make the learning process very easier as
well as a fun to learn.  Today is the era of e-learning in the present time; e-learning
means electronic learning which means you can now study from anywhere through
e-learning.
6. E-COMMERCE

E-commerce means putting your shop online and selling any of your items online. By
doing this, your business becomes local to global, that is, you can sell your goods to
the people of other cities as well. Today e-commerce is in full swing all over the
world. Today, at present, millions of merchants around the world are selling their
products through e-commerce. Today there are many such Internet applications that
help you to sell your goods online and in return charge you a small commission.
Examples of these applications include, Jiji, Jumia, Ebay, Amazon etc.

7. FINANCIAL TRANSACTION

This is a term which is used when there is an exchange of money. With the use of
internet in the financial transaction, the work has become a lot easier. Payments,
Funds transfer, banking transactions can be done through on-line banking service.

8. ENTERTAINMENT

The Internet is also used for entertainment such as chatting with friends, sharing
videos, watching movies, listening to music, live telecast of sports and other events,
playing games, etc. Examples include, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime etc.
9. RESEARCH

In order to do research, we need to go through hundreds of books as well as the

references and that was one of the most difficult jobs to do earlier. Since, the
internet came into life; everything is available in just a click. The user just has to
search for the concerned topic and will get hundreds  of references that may be
beneficial for the research and since, the internet is here to make research  activity
easy and hence, public user can take a large amount benefit from the research work
that  have been done. 

10. REAL-TIME UPDATES

It helps to provide news and other happenings that may be on-going in different
parts of the word but with the use of the internet, we come to know about the real-
time updates in every field be it  in business, sports, finance, politics, entertainment
and others very easily. Many times the decisions are taken on the real-time updates
that are happening in the various parts of the world and for this, the internet is very
essential and helpful.

SEARCH ENGINES
A search engine can be fine as an information retrieval system designed to help find
information stored on a computer system in the internet. The search engine allows
one to ask for content meeting specific word or phrase and retrieve list of items that
match those criteria. The results can take the form of links to websites, images,
videos, or other online data.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK

Firstly, there is the process of discovering the information. Secondly, there is the
organization of the information so that it can be effectively accessed and presented
when users search for something. Thirdly, the information must be assessed to
present search engine users with relevant answers to their queries.
These three stages are usually are:

1. CRAWLING: Search engines use pieces of software called web crawlers to locate
publicly available information from the internet, which is where this process gets its
name. Web crawlers can also sometimes be referred to as search engine spiders. The
process is complicated, but essentially, the crawlers/spiders find the webservers
(also known as servers for short) which host the websites and then proceed to
investigate them.
A list of all the servers is created, and it is established how many websites are hosted
on each server. The number of pages each website has, as well as the nature of the
content, for example, text, images, audio, video, is also ascertained. The crawlers
also follow any links that the website has, whether internal ones that point to pages
within the site or external ones that point to other websites and use them to
discover more pages.

2. INDEXING: Information found by the crawlers is organized, sorted, and stored so

that it can later be processed by the algorithms for presentation to the search engine
user. This is known as indexing. Not all the page information is stored by the search
engine, instead, it's just the essential information needed by the algorithms to assess
the relevance of the page for ranking purposes.

3. RANKING: When a query is entered into a search engine, the index is scoured for
relevant information and then sorted into a hierarchical order by an algorithm. This
ordering of the search engine results pages (SERPs) is known as ranking. Different
search engines use different algorithms and so give different results. Over the years,
algorithms have become more and more complex as they attempt to present more
relevant and accurate answers in response to the queries of search engine users.

EXAMPLES OF SEARCH ENGINES MOST COMMONLY-

USED

1. GOOGLE: This is the biggest search engine in the world by far. It handles over 5
billion searches each day and has a market share of over 90% at the time of writing
(August 2019). Developed originally by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997, Google
has become so successful that it has become synonymous with search engine
services, even entering the dictionary as a verb, with people using expressions such
as: "I googled it" when they've searched for something online.

2. BING: The origins of Microsoft's Bing can be found in the technology company's
earlier search engines, MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. Bing was
launched in 2009 with high hopes that it could usurp its rival Google, but despite
attracting many fans, things haven't quite worked out that way. Even so, Bing is the
third largest search engine worldwide after Google and Baidu. It is available in 40
different languages.

3. YAHOO: Yahoo search is another big player in the search engine world. However,
for much of its history it has supplied the user interface but relied on others to
power the searchable index and web crawling. From 2001 to 2004, it was powered
by Inktomi and then Google. From 2004, Yahoo! Search was independent until a deal
was struck with Microsoft in 2009 whereby Bing would power the index and
crawling.

4. ASK.COM: Originally known as Ask Jeeves. Ask.com is a little different from Google
and Bing as it uses a question and answer format. For a number of years, Ask.com
was focused on becoming a direct rival to the big search engines, but nowadays,
answers are supplied from its vast archive and users contributions, along with the
help of an unnamed and outsourced third-party search provider.

5. AOL.COM: AOL is originally known as America Online, was a big player in the early
days of the internet revolution, providing a dial-up service for millions of Americans
in the late 1990's. Despite AOL's decline as broadband gradually replaced dial-up, the
AOL search engine is still used by a significant minority of searchers. On June 23,
2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications.

6. INTERNET ARCHIVE: The Internet Archive provides free public access to a wide
range of digital materials. A nonprofit digital library based in San Francisco, it's a
great tool for tracing the history domains and seeing how they have evolved over the
years. Besides websites, you can also find software applications and games,
movies/videos, music, moving images, and a huge collection of public-domain books.
The Internet Archive also campaigns for a free and open internet.

Others include: Baidu, DuckDuckGo, WolframAlpha, Yandex etc.

USES OF THE INTERNET

1. COMMUNICATION: The internet opens up many different possible ways to
communicate with others. The Internet has email, instant messaging, social media,
online discussion forums, video, and voice calls for the major portion of
communication.

2. RESEARCH AND HOMEWORK: In today’s world, the Internet has new ways for our
research and education. The internet is a fantastic place to research information for
a project or piece of homework. It doesn't matter what topic you have been set, you
can guarantee that you will find something on the subject.

3. LEISURE AND ENTERTAINMENT: There are many different ways that you can choose
to spend your time online and amuse yourself. Here are a few: Playing online games,
listening to music (mp3 download or live streaming), reading online books and e-
books, watching online videos e.g. YouTube, looking for holidays or concert tickets,
reading about your hobbies, keeping up-to-date with the news and sporting events
etc.

4. EXPLORING THE WORLD: The internet has many services that help you explore the
world. Satellite and mapping applications e.g. Google Earth Travel sites providing
details of other places. Live web cams showing other parts of the world.

5. REAL-TIME UPDATES: The Internet is helping people to keep up with what is

happening around the world. Many news and information websites provide real-time
updates on various categories, such as politics, history, news, geology, leisure,
sports, technology, marketing, and more. One can easily select the category of
interest and stay connected with updates. The presence of e-newspapers and
magazines is updating people and helping to cut paper usage.

6. ADVERTISING: Because most people use the Internet, it is the best means of
promoting something or advertising. There are options for paid promotion as well as
free promotion. There are many advertising platforms on the Internet that help
promote products or businesses online. These platforms advertise products on other
related websites using banners, videos, email etc. They charge for these
advertisements according to distance, keywords and audience etc.