Organization

/biː-plʌs-triː/

noun — "optimized B-tree variant for database indexing."

/biː-triː/

noun — "balanced tree for efficient data retrieval."

/ˌθriː dʒiː piː piː/

proper noun — "the group defining mobile network standards worldwide."

/ˌaɪ tiː ˈjuː/

proper noun — "the global referee for how the world’s communication systems agree to work together."

/ˌiːtiːˈɛsaɪ/

noun — "the body that defines global telecommunications standards from Europe."

/ˌdʌbəl.juː ˈθriː ˈsiː/

n. “Decide how the web should behave… then argue about it for years.”

W3C, short for World Wide Web Consortium, is the primary standards body responsible for defining how the modern web is supposed to work — not in theory, but in practice, across browsers, devices, and decades of accumulated technical debt. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web itself, the W3C exists to prevent the web from fragmenting into incompatible dialects controlled by whoever shouts the loudest.