What if the Web wasn't free?

Ian Lamont — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:46:10 -0700

I was struck by Sir Tim Berners-Lee's comment in this BBC article about the history of the World Wide Web. Fifteen years ago, CERN released the Web's code into the public domain, sparking a revolution that has deeply impacted communications, computing, and society at large. "Making the web free to use had a vital role in spreading its use worldwide," said Berners-Lee, while recalling his early Web research at the European laboratory.

This underscores an important point: Not everyone thought that the Web should be a free, open technology. CERN executives had to be convinced to "give it away," reports his colleague Robert Cailliau.

What if they had failed? What if the Web became part of some closed interactive computing technology, that was restricted to CERN's labs or developed as a subscription-based commercial product? The BBC article mentions one alternative, Gopher, but the story reminded me of several commercial networked services which eventually fell by the wayside -- Prodigy, Minitel, and Qube.

Industry Standard contributor Larry Borsato recently pointed out the disruptive effect of "free," as well as the potential for free services and technologies to create value. I agree with him on these points, and also tip my hat to Sir Berners-Lee -- without a free Web, the world we live in would be far more closed and disconnected. And there is little chance that The Industry Standard would have been launched in print form, much less online form -- unless there was enough reader and advertiser interest to support versions for Prodigy and Minitel.

More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:

Opinion: 10 'Net services that will succeed (and 10 that will probably fail)
Melissa Chang: Five reasons why a recession is a good time to start a company
Melissa Chang: 10 reasons that start-ups 100% absolutely should outsource (almost) everything
Melissa Chang: Facebook vs. MySpace: The battle for global social network dominance
Ian Lamont: Is Twitter worth $75 million? $150 million? How about none of the above?
Ian Lamont: The real problem with Google's Blogger service: Neglect
Ian Lamont: Why podcasting is failing

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What if the Web wasn't free?