Why google.com and www.google.com aren’t exactly the same

Let me explain.

Before the www, the Internet already existed for many purposes, such as email, file transfers, DNS lookups, and more.

So why was www introduced and what was its purpose?

The prefix www (World Wide Web) is actually just a subdomain similar to gemini.google.com or meet.google.com.

Back in the early days of the Internet (1990s and early 2000s), a single company or organization might have different servers for different services, because no single server was capable of handling all services at once.

• ftp.example.com handled file transfers (FTP)
• mail.example.com handled emails (SMTP)

So “www” was a naming convention that told people and systems, “this is the web server.”

• www.example.com served web pages (HTTP/HTTPS)

But Today, modern servers can handle all these services at once, making www. technically unnecessary.

However, most people still type www. so domains are usually configured with a www alias pointing to the same page as the main domain.

That’s why whether you type google.com or www.google.com, you end up on the same page.