Mining the Web

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The World Wide Web is the largest and most widely known repository of hypertext. Hypertext documents contain text and generally embed hyperlinks to other documents distributed across the Web. Today, the Web comprises billions of documents, authored by millions of diverse people, edited by no one in particular, and distributed over millions of computers that are connected by telephone lines, optical fibers, and radio modems. It is a wonder that the Web works at all. Yet it is rapidly assisting and supplementing newspapers, radio, television, and telephone, the postal system, schools and colleges, libraries, physical workplaces, and even the sites of commerce and governance.

A brief history of hypertext and the Web. Citation, ...