Well, it’s a global information system. It exchanges information between people. It connects people. It’s a communications system. It is “the universe of network-accessible information, the embodiment of human knowledge”. https://www.w3.org/WWW/

“The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.” https://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission

The W3C’s goals sum it up: Web for all, Web on everything, Web for rich interactions.

In other words, help everyone everywhere do all the things.

Apart from the raw technical details, the Web is all about being “universal”: I can access this thing, do this thing, anywhere on any device.

The goal of the Web is to provide universal access to information technology.

Technology helps people do stuff. Information technology manipulates data. The Web links data and services across technology, making them accessible to as many people, in as many contexts, as possible.

Another way to think about it: What can we do with data? How can we use technology? How can we connect those things together? That’s the Web.

The goal of the Web is to connect and enable.

So web performance boils down to how well Web-enabled technology works. Can it be accessed? Can it be used? 

The trick is figuring out how to measure those things. Access is relatively straightforward (e.g., page load time) but use is not. You can compare page load times across websites, but what about usability? How do you compare the use of an online magazine, to a banking app, to a fitness tracker, to a video chat service, to food delivery systems, to blogging platforms, to e-commerce, etc.?

But that’s where the heart of web performance is: how well the Web supports the things we're trying to use it for.

What does the Web do for you?