Tim Berners-Lee is allowing his vision of the internet to be undone by Big Tech

In 2012, I was fortunate enough to attend with my wife the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympic Games.

Sitting behind us were a group of young Americans. They were loving it, cheering along at the spectacular display. Then, their whooping and hollering really took off. It was when Sir Tim Berners-Lee made a rare, surprise personal appearance. Along with everyone else in the vast stadium, us included, they were on their feet, applauding and shouting their approval. “He’s the guy who invented the web,” one of them shouted. “Wow!”

Today, while Berners-Lee’s presence would still provoke an enthusiastic response I am not sure it would be so universally warm. In some quarters, mention of his name sparks shaking of heads, even downright dismay.

Berners-Lee gave the world a great gift. Without his invention we would not have the internet as we know it, we would certainly not have the world wide web. What he unveiled was a new utility, one that was free, available to all, that could be used for work and for pleasure, that could be harnessed to inform, educate and entertain.

Those descriptions are as broad as they are long – one person’s idea of entertainment may be another’s abuse, the imparting of knowledge might include details for the commission of a terrible crime. Generally, though, the web has benefited the world hugely, so much so that it’s impossible now to imagine life without it. For that, Berners-Lee deserves unalloyed thanks.

So concerned was Berners-Lee to preserve his legacy, to ensure its purity by applying universal standards, that he formed a safeguarding body, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with the declared mission “to lead the web to its full potential.”

Based in Massachusetts, W3C is 26 years old, has 446 member organisations and 63 staff. Berners-Lee is its director.

W3C, though, is failing in its objective. Berners-Lee, the father of the internet, who famously did not want to make a fortune from his invention and donated it to the world, is allowing his gift to be subsumed by a few tech behemoths, led by Google.

Declaration of interest. I’m a supporter of MOW, a campaigning organisation called Marketers for an Open Web. Its members are drawn from newspaper publishers, broadcasters, advertising, tech and data collection and analytics companies.

I’m not a marketer, nor am I a technophile and I don’t collect data, but they have my allegiance because one of their aims is to encourage journalism. That’s because by monopolising the gathering of personal data, the charge is that Google is stifling competition, restricting choice and making online advertising outside the preserve of Google less financially attractive, which will impact heavily upon news outlets’ revenues and their prospects of survival.

Google is rightly hailed the world over for its search engine. In truth, the Californian corporation is a mammoth advertising-driven profits machine. Google’s annual revenues are $181 billion – by comparison, WPP, the world’s largest advertising group, has revenues of $16.9 billion. Google harvests and uses our personal data to enable better targeted online advertising – it knows what we’re interested in, what we’re looking at, so the adverts that appear on our screens can be tailored accordingly, for a price.

Google maintains that “third-party cookies” – the software advertisers themselves use to collect our data – are bad, that they risk abusing our privacy. Google says nothing, however, about using similar technology within its own portfolio of products.

Without third-party cookies, advertising on their platforms is nowhere near as efficient and therefore nothing like as valuable. Indeed, research by Google itself shows that barring third-party cookies will result in a 52 per cent decrease in revenues for the top 500 global publishers. Some estimates reckon the actual drop could amount to as much as 65 per cent of their advertising income. MOW argues therefore that smaller news and editorial sites that rely heavily on funding from advertising could go out of business completely.

For their part, governments are also growing increasingly alarmed at the relentless progress of a handful of tech giants. The recent G7 Digital and Technology Ministerial Declaration stressed the need for open democratic systems to be supported by open technology. It sought to promote cooperation on internet governance.

According to the Berners-Lee mission, W3C exists to ensure a “Web for All”, enabling “human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge” from and by any device, in order to fulfil a vision of  “participation, sharing knowledge, and thereby building trust on a global scale”.

But W3C seems unwilling to challenge Google and the other tech titans, as the “champion” of the open web.

In a dig that could be interpreted as being aimed at least in part at W3C, the UK government’s G7 statement emphasised: “We will work with stakeholders to ensure inclusive digital technical standards development processes for areas such as the internet, telecommunications and emerging digital technologies. In particular, we will work with stakeholders towards the more inclusive development of internet protocols that contribute to, and protect, the continuing evolution of an open, interoperable, reliable and secure internet, one that is unfragmented, supports freedom, innovation and trust, and empowers people.”

According to a 2020 US Congress House Report, Google has 106 employees working with W3C, within its various sectional and technical sub-groups and forums. That’s more than eight times the number from Microsoft, the next largest representation (most companies, by contrast, have just one W3C representative). It’s hard to see how that can create a proper place for discussing choice and standards – not when so many people in the room are from just one company.

W3C is not functioning as Berners-Lee intended, and as a result, his great creation, the world wide web, is moving further away from his vision.

I did ask Berners-Lee to comment, to explain his current thinking, but he refused. No reason was given.  

Sadly, what should be an open web for all is in danger of becoming a closed means to riches for a powerful few.