Sir Tim Berners-Lee is right: the Web is under severe threat from monopoly interests

'The web is now falling victim to the same laws of capitalism that have befallen every innovation from electricity to train transport'

Sir Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web (WWW) has come a long way in just under 30 years. It was designed originally to foster collaboration between academics and scientists in an open, accessible manner. Yet today the web has evolved dramatically and not always in the manner that its inventor had hoped. Berners-Lee has frequently spoken of his fears that control of the internet is falling into the hands of a few large corporations and governments.

So where did it all go wrong for the principles of the open web?

Universal access versus commercial priorities

The original ambitions for the WWW have been co-opted by those treading a difficult line between commercial priorities and public good. It is laudable that companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter want to contribute to a universally accessible experience. However, it has become apparent that this aspiration often collides with fulfilling the needs of Wall Street and shareholders.

Internet users, either consciously or unconsciously, have entered into a bargain which is not in the spirit of the WWW. Rather than encouraging open collaboration, users now trade personal information, such as age, likes and dislikes and location for access to services such as email, maps, games and search. The service providers then sell access to their users to advertisers who are able to market their products to a highly defined audience using very sophisticated tools.

Building walls is bad business

It is increasingly the "walled gardens" of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple that own our online experience and consequently the majority of revenues. In digital advertising alone, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) claims Google and Facebook own 64 per cent of the US market, which is worth nearly $60bn. This is to the detriment of smaller publishers and media outlets which have seen their share of these revenues plummet.

The shared economy superstars Uber and Airbnb are also using the same approach to dominate their sectors and commentators are speculating about where they could take their business models next.

This should worry everyone who cares about an open and accessible internet for all. History tells us that walls are bad. They are bad for society and they will have a damaging long-term effect on business too. The more we drive users into "walled" environments, the more we are conditioning them not to search for what they want, but to accept what they are served by algorithms.

This will have two key impacts. First, unless your business can afford to pay to be seen or attract audiences to your own walled garden, you will lose.

More concerning, though, is the impact on the relationship between vendor and customer. Aggregators and search engines appear to have changed the economics of everything from records to mortgages. These intermediaries, such as Moneysupermarket for financial products, pool all the best deals from multiple providers, meaning that our vendor interactions are entirely through a third party. This has encouraged consumers to expect cheaper goods and services, reducing their direct connection with brands.

The World Wide Web is the latest victim of market oligopoly

The WWW is now falling victim to the same laws of capitalism that have befallen every innovation from electricity to the telephone and train transport. Initially disruptive, once established these industries became dominated by a small handful of corporations.

Chris Anderson proclaimed the death of the WWW in 2010. In his article he said of its impending doom: "This is the natural path of industrialisation: invention, propagation, adoption, control."

So if we still believe in the values of the open web, how do we protect these principles, but create a model that is viable for all?

The crypto-clubcard

The key must lie in giving users greater ownership and control of their data, combined with more creative incentives to participate in online commerce.

Ownership and control are easily solved, but will not be liked by governments and today's web "elite". Encryption and algorithms can combine to remove the reliance on today's centralised, server-based model. In this new paradigm, data would exist as encrypted chunks hosted on a decentralised network of end-user computers.

This would make it harder for hackers to endanger the privacy of users and would reduce the dangers of over-centralised control, but would also force a rethink of the current online commerce model. Instead of expecting reams of personal information about consumers in return for providing "free" services, vendors would have to incentivise consumers to engage with them. The existence of crypto-currencies is one obvious way this could happen, whereby vendors would reward users for engaging with them in some form of "crypto-clubcard" model.

This would enable users to measure the value of the rewards against the price they are paying for the relationship with the vendor. And unlike today's world of marketing-led incentives, this approach could be a more credible economic model, where individuals could even derive some kind of income from their relationship with vendors and service providers.

Similarly, businesses would benefit from having direct contact with a motivated and engaged audience. By removing a layer of middlemen, firms have a greater opportunity to instil their product or service propositions in a more encompassing way; one that is not purely focused on price.

This is nothing new. Great work is already being done in this area by the likes of Douglas Rushkoff and Professor Arun Sundararajan.

In its day, the WWW was a massively disruptive force for good. However, it has now succumbed to the dire warnings of the likes of Chris Anderson, an innovative technology that has gone mainstream and become dominated by a handful of powerful players. It is time for a radical rethink.

Nick Lambert is chief operating officer at MaidSafe