{"id":115973,"date":"2018-11-07T18:06:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T18:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/11\/07\/google-and-facebook-back-berners-lees-case-fortheweb\/"},"modified":"2020-02-28T02:46:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T02:46:07","slug":"google-and-facebook-back-berners-lees-case-fortheweb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/11\/07\/google-and-facebook-back-berners-lees-case-fortheweb\/","title":{"rendered":"Google and Facebook back Berners-Lee’s Case #ForTheWeb"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, November 5, Tim Berners-Lee unveiled a document called “The Case for the Web” which outlines principles to protect and enhance the web’s future, as well as craft a collective contract for May 2019. <\/strong><\/p>\n

He revealed these plans for a contract at the Web Summit in Lisbon, together with his organization, the Web Foundation.<\/p>\n

Signers\u00a0to join the contract thus far include Facebook, Google<\/a>, the French Government, Sir Richard Branson, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and more than fifty other organizations and key individuals. Amazon<\/a> has reportedly not yet joined.<\/p>\n

The contract is expected to be finalized\u00a0in May 2019, the year when the web celebrates its 30th birthday, and when half of the world’s population is expected to be online.<\/p>\n

When asked which particular groups he’s targeting to join, Berners-Lee pronounced<\/a>, “Everybody, everybody.” The\u00a0hope is that any and all companies, individuals, and governments will participate in crafting this contract.\u00a0You can show your support here<\/a>, and also participate on Twitter with #ForTheWeb.<\/p>\n

Why do we need a case for the web?<\/h3>\n

The document begins\u00a0by\u00a0chronicling a bit of web history: how we’ve grown from just one website in 1990 to\u00a0nearly two billion websites<\/a>\u00a0at the end of 2018 \u2014 or one website for every four people in the world.<\/p>\n

Much of that explosive growth has brought life-saving change<\/strong>: uncovering corruption, overthrowing dictators, providing emergency relief from natural disasters, sourcing truth,\u00a0giving\u00a0countless\u00a0people access to education, advancing innovation, creating millions of jobs.<\/p>\n

But much of that growth has also carried disastrous consequences:<\/strong> election interference, cyber bullying, misinformation, discrimination, spread of hate speech and terrorism, data breaches and privacy scandals.<\/p>\n

For better and for worse<\/strong>, the web has “changed lives and altered the course of history. . .\u00a0It has changed the way we communicate with each other, opening up new worlds and new ways of thinking, even if we haven\u2019t left home.”<\/p>\n

The document then discusses how “the web we know and love is under attack.”<\/p>\n

Right now it’s not for everyone — over half the people in the world aren’t online, and most of them are marginalized populations (specifically those from low-income countries and women).<\/p>\n

And right now, the vast majority of internet power is concentrated in the hands of a few<\/a> giant companies:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“More than 90% of online searches go through Google<\/a>, giving the company tremendous power over what people see when searching online.2 More than half of cloud services run on Amazon. Facebook boasts over 2.2 billion active monthly users<\/a>, and users of Facebook-owned WhatsApp top 1.5 billion. The responsibility that weighs on the shoulders of these companies and others like them could hardly be greater.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is to be done, then? That’s exactly what Berners-Lee and the Web Foundation are trying to accomplish here: “to establish the open web as a public good and a basic right.”<\/p>\n

What are the 3 key focus areas of “The Case for the Web”?<\/h3>\n

The Case for the Web outlines three main efforts the contract hopes to further.<\/p>\n

Accessible and affordable for everyone <\/strong><\/p>\n