W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium, is the standards body responsible for HTML, XML, and a host of XML related standards that provide for the infrastructure of the Web.  W3C is committed to leading the technical evolution of the Web. In just over five years, W3C has developed more than 20 technical specifications for the Web's infrastructure. W3C´s focus on technologies  make the Web a robust, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure for a world of information.  In general they develop core infrastructure standards and leave it to other standards organizations to develop application standards that are built on top of the core Web standards.

You can find out more about W3C by linking to their Web site at  www.w3.org.