TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service. As of November 2014, it was the second most popular online newspaper in the UK with over 17 million readers per month; with over 21 million monthly readers, Mail Online was the most popular.
The site is made up of a core news site, with niche sections and subsections covering subjects including sport, business, environment, technology, arts and media, and lifestyle. TheGuardian.com is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on 14 March 2006, by a new comment section, "Comment is free", which has since merged into its Opinion section.
The site can be viewed without cost or registration, though some services such as leaving comments on articles require users to register. In March 2009, Guardian.co.uk launched their API, using the OAuth protocol and making a wide range of Guardian content available for use by web application developers.
TheGuardian.com is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media, including The Guardian daily newspaper and The Observer Sunday newspaper. Guardian Media Group is owned by the Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to takeover by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.
Guardian.co.uk was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. Its popularity soared after the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in The Guardian newspaper.