The Question with No Simple Answer
If the internet breaks, who do you call? Who is the president of the internet?
The answer is no one.
The internet is not a single network owned by one company or government. It is a network of networks. Tens of thousands of independent entities — universities, governments, and private companies (like Comcast, Google, or a local ISP) — all agree to connect together and speak the same technical languages (protocols). No single entity owns the cables, the routers, or the addressing system end-to-end.
While there is no single boss, there is Internet Governance. This is a complex, bottom-up ecosystem of organizations that coordinate the critical technical standards and unique identifiers necessary for this global system to function as one coherent whole. It operates on a "multi-stakeholder" model, relying on rough consensus and running code rather than top-down commands from any government or corporation.
Think of it like the global postal system. No single country runs international mail. Instead, countries agree on shared standards (envelope sizes, addressing formats, postage conventions) through international bodies, and each country manages its own internal delivery. The internet works the same way — shared rules, distributed execution.