Why is Internet capitalized?

This is a very dry explanation.

American English is the ultimate bastard language.
It is the bastard child of an already bastardised Language. Capitalism has a lot to do with the capitalisation of the word ‘Internet’.
The word is a commercial brand name in its infancy.

(My use of the word “bastard” refers to that of definition 4a. in the Oxford English dictionary….

bastard, n. and a.
(ˈbɑːstəd, æ)

4.B.4 fig. Not genuine; counterfeit, spurious; debased, adulterated, corrupt.

Same reason “Earth” is capitalized when you’re talking about THE Earth, but not when you’re talking about earth meaning dirt.

The Internet is the global network of computer programs that we all use. An internet is any such network of computer devices.

@Boogabooga1 Where did you get the idea that “Internet” was ever a commercial brand name? Internet is a contraction of “intereconnected network”. It was never a brand name.

The Internet is a proper noun and refers to a specific thing. In the 1980s, the Associated Press Style Book and the Chicago Manual of Style started capitalizing references to the Internet. Both the AP Style Book and the CMS set the standards you read in most written media and literature.

I tend to agree with @MrItty. I was under the impression that World Wide Web was the “brand name”, if that’s the proper term, and that internet was just a noun.

The World Wide Web is simply one component of the Internet – it’s the set of all connections that are given via the HyperText Transfer Proticol (HTTP). There is no “brand name” associated with the Internet, because the Internet does not have an owner.

@bkcunningham

You are exactly correct.