Sep 29, 2025 14:00:00

Tim Berners-Lee writes, 'Why I gave the World Wide Web away for free'

Tim Berners-Lee , a British computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW) , spoke about why he made the WWW available for free and pointed out some of the problems with the modern web.

Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Technology | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/28/why-i-gave-the-world-wide-web-away-for-free

Berners-Lee first came up with the idea for the World Wide Web when he was 34 years old, proposing it at meetings, sketching it on a whiteboard, and drawing it on the snow while skiing with friends. He then petitioned his superiors at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) for permission to develop it, and he created the World Wide Web, a combination of the Internet and hypertext.

When asked why he developed the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee said, 'I believed that by giving users such a simple way to interact with the Internet, it would spark creativity and collaboration on a global scale. If you can put anything on the Web, then after a while, everything will be there.'

The key to the WWW's functioning was that 'everyone could use it and wanted to use it.' To achieve this already difficult ideal, Berners-Lee realized that charging for each search or upload was not an option; for the WWW to be successful, it had to be free. In 1993, Berners-Lee persuaded his superiors at CERN to donate the WWW's intellectual property to the public domain, opening the WWW to everyone.

Berners-Lee argued that today's web is no longer free, with a few large platforms collecting users' personal data and sharing it with commercial brokers and oppressive governments, and that algorithms that negatively impact teenagers' mental health are ubiquitous. 'Buying and selling personal data in exchange for the use of services is completely incompatible with my vision of a free web,' he said.

Already, on many platforms, people are no longer just customers but products, with their data, even if anonymized, being sold to unspecified third parties and targeted with content and advertising, including harmful content that incites real-world violence and spreads misinformation.

So, more than 10 years ago, Berners-Lee and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed

Solid, an open-source standard that allows users to manage their own data. Solid aggregates user data in one place so that users can manage it themselves. Apps that run on Solid request data from users, and users can choose whether to agree to it.

Solid will store biometric data from smartwatches, financial data linked to credit cards, comments on YouTube and Reddit, and posts on Facebook and X. Berners-Lee stated, 'All of this data is generated by you - your actions, your choices, your body, your preferences, your decisions. You should own it and be empowered by it.'

Berners-Lee argues that the world went in the wrong direction between his vision of 'Web 1.0,' when he decided to provide the WWW for free, and 'Web 2.0,' when social media took over. He argues that the world is at a new crossroads at the time of writing, and that we must learn from past mistakes and take action to determine the governance model for AI.

In 2017, Berners-Lee published a thought experiment about an AI called 'Charlie' that works for people, describing an AI that works for people but is bound by laws and regulations, like a doctor or lawyer. By applying this same framework to AI, we can create AI that is useful to people without concentrating power in the hands of monopolistic corporations.

'I made the World Wide Web free because I believed the web only works if it works for everyone. Today I believe that's truer than ever. Regulation and global governance is technically achievable, but it relies heavily on political will. If we can muster that will, we have a chance to restore the web as a tool for collaboration, creativity, and compassion across cultural boundaries. We can re-empower the individual and reclaim the web. It's not too late,' said Berners-Lee.