'Mr Google' may not love SAFE Network, but his employees do, says MaidSafe's David Irvine

Silicon Valley employees and Chinese citizens are among contributors to the serverless internet alternative

MaidSafe, the Scottish company based in Troon, Ayrshire, that's creating a decentralised internet called SAFE Network, is receiving help with development and testing from employees of big Silicon Valley companies which, ironically, would have no place on this alternative network, said its CEO David Irvine (pictured, left).

Irvine and his team have spent the last 10 years working on eliminating the server - the presence of which he sees as an accident of history - from the internet.

"It's going back to first principles," he told Kaye Adams on her BBC Radio Scotland show on Monday. "There shouldn't be these intermediaries, it should be an awful lot simpler. We're now all connected to each other, all our computers are literally connected, so why would you put someone in the middle?"

The ramifications of a serverless internet go far beyond simply tinkering with network architecture, because the intermediaries in question, i.e. the operators of the data centres that process, store and ultimately control the data flowing around the globe, are some of the biggest companies in the world: the Amazons, Facebooks and Googles.

"So how are the big boys in Silicon Valley taking this?" asked Adams. "They must know about you. Is that why you are hiding in Troon?"

"They do know about us and they are very interested," Irvine replied. "A lot of people from those companies are part of our community and they love what we're doing."

"So Mr Google loves you?" probed Adams, who in fairness had admitted being a little out of her comfort zone on the subject of technology.

"Well, maybe not him, himself" Irvine responded, gamely, adding: "The community behind us is thousands of people now, from throughout the world and particularly China. We've done tests and people from behind the firewall can connect and get the data."

The appeal of the fledgeling decentralised peer-to-peer internet as envisaged by MaidSafe is that it is private, anonymous and much harder to hack with security being applied to the data rather than the server. It's an idealistic vision too. Irvine insisted that he is not interested in personal gain (a large proportion of the company's shares is invested in an educational charity) but rather in creating a free, secure network without surveillance and tracking.

"And you're close to cracking that one?" asked Adams.

"In terms of data security we've certainly cracked that. The ability to log on to a decentralised network, we've cracked that too. The part we're currently testing is the network itself. When all the computers connect to each other you get a sort of cyber brain. When you log in it gives you your data and your data only. That's what we're testing right now," Irvine said, promising to reveal "something pretty spectacular" in the next few weeks.

Mr Google and the other Silicon Valley big boys will no doubt be watching this space with even more interest.