If you asked a college student if they knew who Jeff Bezos was, chances are they would say yes. After all, they may have even ordered something off of Amazon recently. However, if you asked them if they knew the name Tim Berners-Lee, most of them (excluding the computer science majors) would say no –– even though they had probably been using his creation earlier that day.
It’s strange to think that the founder of an e-commerce company is more famous than the inventor of the World Wide Web, especially since Amazon couldn’t run without the aforementioned platform.
Among computer scientists, Berners-Lee is an icon. Along with inventing the WWW –– which are traditionally the first three letters of a web address –– he developed integral pieces of the Internet, such as HTML, HTTP, and URLs. But why is he not a household name like other famous founders?
To put it simply, he didn’t want to be. Berners-Lee has never actively promoted himself or the WWW, mostly to keep the “open-access” concept, in which anyone and everyone can add content to the web. More specifically, he chose not to patent the World Wide Web, to preserve this freedom. By putting a name to the WWW, he would most likely profit from this, and perhaps push the Internet to have a fee for usage, which some may not have been able to afford consistently. Instead, Berners-Lee commits effort to nonprofits such as the World Wide Web Foundation.
In the last half century, the Internet has changed dramatically. From the first website to the recent antitrust case against Google and the rise of easily available artificial intelligence, the 21st century is set to be one of the most monumental in history in terms of technological ascent. As the looming threats of ChatGPT and Meta grow, where should we go, other than to the root of the problem –– which is, why are we growing dependent on these digital companies?
Even before the Internet was officially launched on April 30, 1993, search engines were already being conceptualized and created. In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote about an information archive in the article “As We May Think,” published in The Atlantic Monthly. He named this system a “memex,” an abbreviation of the words “memory expansion.” Bush wrote an abridged version of the article later that year in September after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, projecting his want for scientific progress to be used for advancement, not destruction. Even back in 1945, Bush’s philosophy coincided with that of Tim Berners-Lee.
In the 1960s, the ARPANET network was formed. At the time, the United States was in the midst of the Cold War and nearing the last quarter of the Vietnam War. Because of this, the ARPANET was formed to be a sort of nuclear bunker, capable of functioning even if several parts crashed. This made the ARPANET the first decentralized web. But what does that even mean?
Decentralization is the process of distributing power and resources across all facets of an organization or platform. There is no one department in charge of the entire system. A real world example of decentralization is a red harvester ant colony. In general, they all work together for a safe society, but are essentially autonomous. Most tasks can be completed by any ant in the colony. On the technological side, a prime example of this system is how Netflix functions as a company. Netflix allows for their employees to weigh in on many of the decisions that the company makes as a whole. Basically, the ants represent all of the websites, organizations, and businesses that make up the Internet as a whole. Again, connected, but also completely independent and free to access by anyone.
On the other hand, centralization is when most activities are (as it may be expected) centralized under a single governing authority. This is the foundation of government systems such as totalitarianism and autocracy. Centralization is found in the governments of France and the United Kingdom. This almost acts as a tree root system, with many different branches coming from a central root that leads the growth.
Originally, the Internet was created as a decentralized system, and, for the most part, still is today. The first published search engine was known as Archie (which is an archive without the v), created in 1990 by Alan Emtage in Montreal, Canada. It was designed as a way to create a searchable database of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) archives. Even then, one could see a resemblance of what the global search engine known as Google would become. Throughout the next two years, WebCrawler, Yahoo, and others of the sort entered the picture.
In recent years, tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook have been consuming a large portion of the Internet’s freedom. Certain actions made by these large tech companies, such as Meta’s privacy leaking scandal, seem to look like things are taking a turn for the worst, but no one company has made a big move yet.
In case Google’s dominance is not evident, its share of the search engine market tells its own story. According to the Global Statcounter, as of 2022, Google has a market share of 90%, as compared to the runner-up Bing, at 4%. Other most used search engines include Yandex (2%) and Yahoo! (1%). The other 3% is made up of even less frequently used search engines, mostly unknown to the general public. As of April 21, 2025, Google’s net worth is $1.843T.
In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a landmark lawsuit against Google accusing the company of monopolizing the search engine market. The allegations primarily made by the DOJ were that Google was making illegal deals with Apple and Samsung to be the default search engine on their devices. Additionally, Google was accused of monopolizing ad-tech software. Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in favor of the DOJ in two out of the three counts. Currently, trials to determine remedies are scheduled for May.
This recent advancement in the intersection of the Internet and the government has the potential to turn the tides of the centralization of the web. One might wonder what could have happened if Tim Berners-Lee had decided to profit from the WWW back in 1990, and if the state of the web would differ from what it is today. However, we will never truly know the answer to this, so the best that the next generation of computer scientists, activists, and ordinary people can do is try to keep the web as it was intended –– public, open-minded, and decentralized.
Nina Haubner is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, who likes to swim competitively, obsess over musicals (with the occasional off-handed Hamilton quote), and binge K-dramas.
