The ‘www’ prefix was never an essential feature of URLs, with the first website not using it when it was created in 1990.
Instead, the use of ‘www’ came about due to the existing trend of using subdomains for different services on a domain.
So when the World Wide Web was established, administrators followed this convention by placing the WWW server on the ‘www’ subdomain.
It soon became standard practice and expected by the public, to the extent that people would ignore the ‘http://’ prefix at the start of domains.
In time trends changed and many domains did not need to fold web traffic under its own subdomain, while technological changes also helped reduce the need for the ‘www’ prefix.
Today, the prefix is seen as largely obsolete, at least to most people, although it can still have value when it comes to cookies.
Most browsers also now strip the ‘www’ prefix, with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all hiding it.
However the ‘www’ prefix stands as a reminder of how the internet is constantly evolving.
