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Tim Berners-Lee Says: Too Much Centralisation is Killing the WWW

posted by martyb on Friday November 02 2018, @07:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-big-for-your-boots dept.

Mainframe Bloke writes:

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the "father" of the World Wide Web, has said what many are likely feeling: the centralisation of the network has gone too far and it's time to consider breaking up the behemoths that dominate it to the extent of locking out new players.

The Register has more here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/01/tim_berners_lee_internet_giants/

The source, TBL's interview with Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-www/father-of-web-says-tech-giants-may-have-to-be-split-up-idUSKCN1N63MV (don't follow the Register link which is wrong).

Excerpt:
“What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up,” Berners-Lee, 63, said in an interview. “There is a danger of concentration.”

But he urged caution too, saying the speed of innovation in both technology and tastes could ultimately cut some of the biggest technology companies down to size.

“Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else,” Berners-Lee said.

I'm in violent agreement with TBL, at least on the point of overcentralisation, what about you? I'd be more aggressive than his caution, perhaps, as the barrier to entry seems higher to me than him, and market shifts can be blocked or delayed by counteracting marketing tactics by the incumbents...

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:11AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @10:11AM (#756780)

    And... Sir Tim Berners-Lee decided that backing DRM as a Web standard [theregister.co.uk] it's gonna help, how?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @12:49PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @12:49PM (#756815)

    And quite frankly, as a result, his opinion means very little to me. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong, I don't care; I'll look to people that aren't sellouts for their opinions instead.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @04:43PM (#756912)

      I'll second that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @06:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02 2018, @06:45PM (#756997)

      Tim ceased to be any leading figure shortly after he released HTML and the browser.
      Irrelevant for DECADES.