Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes to files over time. Every clone holds the full history, not just the latest snapshot. You commit, branch, and inspect history entirely offline.
Centralized systems like Subversion or CVS keep the whole history on one server. Your working copy is thin. Most operations need a network round trip, and the server is a single point of failure.
That distribution changes daily work. Branching is cheap and local, so you experiment freely. If the server dies, any clone can restore the project. The cost is a steeper mental model: you juggle local and remote state, and pushing is a separate deliberate step.
Rewriting in plainer words…
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