Final answer:
Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, developing the key technologies of HTML and URI while at CERN and setting the stage for the modern internet's expansive growth.
Step-by-step explanation:
The World Wide Web is the creation of Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN in Switzerland. He developed the three foundational technologies that underpin the web: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), and the protocol to communicate between a client and a server. This development transformed ARPANET's government and academic network into a public information sharing platform, marking the transition to the commercialized internet.
Berners-Lee's vision and technological breakthrough, combined with government and other research networks, led to the establishment of the modern web. While Tim Berners-Lee invented the web at CERN in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Marc Andreessen's creation of the Mosaic browser in 1993 popularized Berners-Lee's inventions, leading to the web's widespread adoption. Despite the competition from commercial services like AOL, the web developed into an open platform that supported a vast array of information and communicative functions, thanks to its free access to the protocols established by CERN.