Git is a source control management system created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 that is distributed, allows for branching, and is very fast. It works by having local repositories that can be synced to remote repositories. Users can create branches to develop features independently and then merge them into the main branch. Useful Git commands include add, commit, push, pull, clone, init and log. Features like stash, rebase, bisect, and cherry-pick allow for flexible workflows. Git is more powerful and distributed than SVN but can be more complicated for beginners.