The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet

The Web Is Dead.
Long Live the Internet | Magazine 5/19/11 2:12 PM
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The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

By Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff August 17, 2010 | 9:00 am | Wired September 2010
Sources: Cisco estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko
The Web Is Dead? A Debate

How the Web Wins
How Do Native Apps and Web Apps Compare?
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The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine 5/19/11 2:12 PM
Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as
simpler, sleeker services — think apps — are less about the
searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains
how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of
capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of
media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and
profitable) pastures.
Who’s to Blame: Who’s to Blame:

Us Them
As much as we love the open, unfettered Web, Chaos isn’t a business model. A new breed of media moguls
we’re abandoning it for simpler, sleeker services is bringing order — and profits — to the digital world.
that just work. by Michael Wolff
by Chris Anderson
An amusing development in the past year or so — if
You wake up and check your email on your you regard post-Soviet finance as amusing — is that
bedside iPad — that’s one app. During Russian investor Yuri Milner has, bit by bit, amassed
breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and one of the most valuable stakes on the Internet: He’s
The New York Times — three more apps. On got 10 percent of Facebook. He’s done this by
the way to the office, you listen to a podcast undercutting traditional American VCs — the Kleiners
on your smartphone. Another app. At work, and the Sequoias who would, in days past, insist on a
you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and special status in return for their early investment.
have Skype and IM conversations. More Milner not only offers better terms than VC firms, he
apps. At the end of the day, you come home, sees the world differently. The traditional VC has a
make dinner while listening to Pandora, play portfolio of Web sites, expecting a few of them to be
some games on Xbox Live, and watch a successes — a good metaphor for the Web itself, broad
movie on Netflix’s streaming service. not deep, dependent on the connections between sites
rather than any one, autonomous property. In an
You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but entirely different strategic model, the Russian is
not on the Web. And you are not alone. concentrating his bet on a unique power bloc. Not only
is Facebook more than just another Web site, Milner
This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past says, but with 500 million users it’s “the largest Web
few years, one of the most important shifts in site there has ever been, so large that it is not a Web
the digital world has been the move from the site at all.”
wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that
use the Internet for transport but not the According to Compete, a Web analytics company, the
browser for display. It’s driven primarily by
browser for display. It’s driven primarily by top 10 Web sites accounted for 31 percent of US
the rise of the iPhone model of mobile pageviews in 2001, 40 percent in 2006, and about 75
computing, and it’s a world Google can’t percent in 2010. “Big sucks the traffic out of small,”
crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And Milner says. “In theory you can have a few very
it’s the world that consumers are increasingly successful individuals controlling hundreds of millions
choosing, not because they’re rejecting the of people. You can become big fast, and that favors the
idea of the Web but because these dedicated domination of strong people.”
platforms often just work better or fit better
into their lives (the screen comes to them, Milner sounds more like a traditional media mogul than
they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact a Web entrepreneur. But that’s exactly the point. If
that it’s easier for companies to make money we’re moving away from the open Web, it’s at least in
on these platforms only cements the trend. part because of the rising dominance of businesspeople
Producers and consumers agree: The Web is more inclined to think in the all-or-nothing terms of
not the culmination of the digital revolution. traditional media than in the come-one-come-all
collectivist utopianism of the Web. This is not just
A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser natural maturation but in many ways the result of a
as the center of the computing world competing idea — one that rejects the Web’s ethic,
appeared inevitable. It seemed just a matter technology, and business models. The control the Web
of time before the Web replaced PC took from the vertically integrated, top-down media
application software and reduced operating world can, with a little rethinking of the nature and the
systems to a “poorly debugged set of device use of the Internet, be taken back.
drivers,” as Netscape cofounder Marc
Andreessen famously said. First Java, then This development — a familiar historical march, both
Flash, then Ajax, then HTML5 — feudal and corporate, in which the less powerful are
increasingly interactive online code — sapped of their reason for being by the better resourced,
promised to put all apps in the cloud and organized, and efficient — is perhaps the rudest shock
replace the desktop with the webtop. Open, possible to the leveled, porous, low-barrier-to-entry
free, and out of control. ethos of the Internet Age. After all, this is a battle that
seemed fought and won — not just toppling
But there has always been an alternative path, newspapers and music labels but also AOL and
one that saw the Web as a worthy tool but Prodigy and anyone who built a business on the idea
not the whole toolkit. In 1997, Wired that a curated experience would beat out the flexibility
published a now-infamous “Push!” cover and freedom of the Web.
story, which suggested that it was time to
“kiss your browser goodbye.” The argument
then was that “push” technologies such as
PointCast and Microsoft’s Active Desktop
would create a “radical future of media
beyond the Web.”
“Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still

have postcards and telegrams, don’t we? But
the center of interactive media —
increasingly, the center of gravity of all
media — is moving to a post-HTML
environment,” we promised nearly a decade
and half ago. The examples of the time were
a bit silly — a “3-D furry-muckers VR
space” and “headlines sent to a pager” — but

the point was altogether prescient: a glimpse
of the machine-to-machine future that would
be less about browsing and more about
getting.
Illustration: Dirk Fowler
As it happened, PointCast, a The truth is that the Web has always had two faces. On the one
glorified screensaver that could hand, the Internet has meant the breakdown of incumbent
inadvertently bring your corporate businesses and traditional power structures. On the other, it’s
network to its knees, quickly been a constant power struggle, with many companies banking
imploded, taking push with it. But their strategy on controlling all or large chunks of the TCP/IP-
just as Web 2.0 is simply Web 1.0 fueled universe. Netscape tried to own the homepage;
that works, the idea has come Amazon.com tried to dominate retail; Yahoo, the navigation of
around again. Those push concepts the Web.
have now reappeared as APIs, apps,
and the smartphone. And this time Google was the endpoint of this process: It may represent open
we have Apple and the iPhone/iPad systems and leveled architecture, but with superb irony and
juggernaut leading the way, with strategic brilliance it came to almost completely control that
tens of millions of consumers openness. It’s difficult to imagine another industry so thoroughly
already voting with their wallets for subservient to one player. In the Google model, there is one
an app-led experience. This post- distributor of movies, which also owns all the theaters. Google,
Web future now looks a lot more by managing both traffic and sales (advertising), created a
convincing. Indeed, it’s already condition in which it was impossible for anyone else doing
here. business in the traditional Web to be bigger than or even
competitive with Google. It was the imperial master over the
The Web is, after all, just one of world’s most distributed systems. A kind of Rome.
many applications that exist on the
Internet, which uses the IP and TCP In an analysis that sees the Web, in the description of Interactive
protocols to move packets around. Advertising Bureau president Randall Rothenberg, as driven by
This architecture — not the specific “a bunch of megalomaniacs who want to own the entirety of the
applications built on top of it — is world,” it is perhaps inevitable that some of those
the revolution. Today the content megalomaniacs began to see replicating Google’s achievement as
you see in your browser — largely their fundamental business challenge. And because Google so
HTML data delivered via the http dominated the Web, that meant building an alternative to the
protocol on port 80 — accounts for Web.
less than a quarter of the traffic on
less than a quarter of the traffic on

the Internet … and it’s shrinking.
The applications that account for
more of the Internet’s traffic
include peer-to-peer file transfers,
email, company VPNs, the
machine-to-machine
communications of APIs, Skype
calls, World of Warcraft and other
online games, Xbox Live, iTunes,
voice-over-IP phones, iChat, and
Netflix movie streaming. Many of
the newer Net applications are
Enter Facebook. The site began as a free but closed system. It
closed, often proprietary, networks.
required not just registration but an acceptable email address
And the shift is only accelerating. (from a university, or later, from any school). Google was
Within five years, Morgan Stanley forbidden to search through its servers. By the time it opened to
projects, the number of users the general public in 2006, its clublike, ritualistic, highly
accessing the Net from mobile regulated foundation was already in place. Its very attraction was
devices will surpass the number that it was a closed system. Indeed, Facebook’s organization of
who access it from PCs. Because information and relationships became, in a remarkably short
the screens are smaller, such mobile period of time, a redoubt from the Web — a simpler, more habit-
traffic tends to be driven by forming place. The company invited developers to create games
specialty software, mostly apps, and applications specifically for use on Facebook, turning the
designed for a single purpose. For site into a full-fledged platform. And then, at some critical-mass
the sake of the optimized point, not just in terms of registration numbers but of sheer time
experience on mobile devices, users spent, of habituation and loyalty, Facebook became a parallel
forgo the general-purpose browser. world to the Web, an experience that was vastly different and
They use the Net, but not the Web. arguably more fulfilling and compelling and that consumed the
Fast beats flexible. time previously spent idly drifting from site to site. Even more to
the point, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg possessed a clear
This was all inevitable. It is the vision of empire: one in which the developers who built
cycle of capitalism. The story of applications on top of the platform that his company owned and
industrial revolutions, after all, is a controlled would always be subservient to the platform itself. It
story of battles over control. A was, all of a sudden, not just a radical displacement but also an
technology is invented, it spreads, a extraordinary concentration of power. The Web of countless
thousand flowers bloom, and then entrepreneurs was being overshadowed by the single
someone finds a way to own it, entrepreneur-mogul-visionary model, a ruthless paragon of
locking out others. It happens every everything the Web was not: rigid standards, high design,
time. centralized control.
Take railroads. Uniform and open Striving megalomaniacs like Zuckerberg weren’t the only ones
gauge standards helped the industry eager to topple Google’s model of the open Web. Content
boom and created an explosion of companies, which depend on advertising to fund the creation and
competitors — in 1920, there were promulgation of their wares, appeared to be losing faith in their
186 major railroads in the US. But ability to do so online. The Web was built by engineers, not
eventually the strongest of them editors. So nobody paid much attention to the fact that HTML-
rolled up the others, and today there constructed Web sites — the most advanced form of online
rolled up the others, and today there

are just seven — a regulated media and design — turned out to be a pretty piss-poor
oligopoly. Or telephones. The advertising medium.
invention of the switchboard was
another open standard that allowed For quite a while this was masked by the growth of the audience
networks to interconnect. After share, followed by an ever-growing ad-dollar share, until, about
telephone patents held by AT&T’s two years ago, things started to slow down. The audience
parent company expired in 1894, continued to grow at a ferocious rate — about 35 percent of all
more than 6,000 independent phone our media time is now spent on the Web — but ad dollars
companies sprouted up. But by weren’t keeping pace. Online ads had risen to some 14 percent
1939, AT&T controlled nearly all of of consumer advertising spending but had begun to level off. (In
the US’s long-distance lines and contrast, TV — which also accounts for 35 percent of our media
some four-fifths of its telephones. time, gets nearly 40 percent of ad dollars.)
Or electricity. In the early 1900s,
after the standardization to
alternating current distribution,
hundreds of small electric utilities
were consolidated into huge holding
companies. By the late 1920s, the
16 largest of those commanded
more than 75 percent of the
electricity generated in the US.
Indeed, there has hardly ever been a

fortune created without a monopoly
of some sort, or at least an
oligopoly. This is the natural path
of industrialization: invention,
propagation, adoption, control.
Now it’s the Web’s turn to face the

pressure for profits and the walled
gardens that bring them. Openness
is a wonderful thing in the
nonmonetary economy of peer
production. But eventually our
tolerance for the delirious chaos of
infinite competition finds its limits.
Much as we love freedom and
choice, we also love things that just
work, reliably and seamlessly. And
if we have to pay for what we love,
well, that increasingly seems OK.
Have you looked at your cell phone
or cable bill lately?
As Jonathan L. Zittrain puts it in

The Future of the Internet — And
How to Stop It, “It is a mistake to

think of the Web browser as the
apex of the PC’s evolution.” Today
the Internet hosts countless closed
gardens; in a sense, the Web is an
exception, not the rule.
Monopolies are actually even more likely in What’s more, there was the additionally sobering
highly networked markets like the online world. and confounding fact that an online consumer
The dark side of network effects is that rich continued to be worth significantly less than an
nodes get richer. Metcalfe’s law, which states offline one. For a while, this was seen as inevitable
that the value of a network increases in right-sizing: Because everything online could be
proportion to the square of connections, creates tracked, advertisers no longer had to pay to reach
winner-take-all markets, where the gap between readers who never saw their ads. You paid for what
the number one and number two players is you got.
typically large and growing.
Unfortunately, what you got wasn’t much.
Consumers weren’t motivated by display ads, as
evidenced by the share of the online audience that
bothered to click on them. (According to a 2009
comScore study, only 16 percent of users ever click
on an ad, and 8 percent of users accounted for 85
percent of all clicks.) The Web might generate
some clicks here and there, but you had to
aggregate millions and millions of them to make
any money (which is what Google, and basically
nobody else, was able to do). And the Web almost
So what took so long? Why wasn’t the Web perversely discouraged the kind of systematized,
colonized by monopolists a decade ago? Because coordinated, focused attention upon which brands
it was in its adolescence then, still innovating are built — the prime, or at least most lucrative,
quickly with a fresh and growing population of function of media.
users always looking for something new.
Network-driven domination was short-lived. What’s more, this medium rendered powerless the
Friendster got huge while social networking was marketers and agencies that might have been able
in its infancy, and fickle consumers were still to turn this chaotic mess into an effective selling
keen to experiment with the next new thing. tool — the same marketers and professional
They found another shiny service and moved on, salespeople who created the formats (the variety
just as they had abandoned SixDegrees.com shows, the 30- second spots, the soap operas) that
before it. In the expanding universe of the early worked so well in television and radio. Advertising
Web, AOL’s walled garden couldn’t compete powerhouse WPP, for instance, with its colossal
with what was outside the walls, and so the walls network of marketing firms — the same firms that
fell. had shaped traditional media by matching content
fell.
with ads that moved the nation — may still
But the Web is now 18 years old. It has reached represent a large share of Google’s revenue, but it
adulthood. An entire generation has grown up in pales next to the greater population of individual
front of a browser. The exploration of a new sellers that use Google’s AdWords and AdSense
world has turned into business as usual. We get programs.
the Web. It’s part of our life. And we just want
to use the services that make our life better. Our
appetite for discovery slows as our familiarity
with the status quo grows.
Blame human nature. As much as we

intellectually appreciate openness, at the end of
the day we favor the easiest path. We’ll pay for
convenience and reliability, which is why iTunes
can sell songs for 99 cents despite the fact that
they are out there, somewhere, in some form, for
free. When you are young, you have more time
than money, and LimeWire is worth the hassle.
As you get older, you have more money than
time. The iTunes toll is a small price to pay for
the simplicity of just getting what you want. The
more Facebook becomes part of your life, the
more locked in you become. Artificial scarcity is
the natural goal of the profit-seeking.
There is an analogy to the current Web in the first era of the One result of the relative lack of
Internet. In the 1990s, as it became clear that digital influence of professional salespeople and
networks were the future, there were two warring camps. hucksters — the democratization of
One was the traditional telcos, on whose wires these feral marketing, if you will — is that
bits of the young Internet were being sent. The telcos advertising on the Web has not
argued that the messy protocols of TCP/IP — all this developed in the subtle and crafty and
unpredictable routing and those lost packets requiring controlling ways it did in other mediums.
resending — were a cry for help. What consumers wanted The ineffectual banner ad, created
were “intelligent” networks that could (for a price) find the (indeed by the founders of this
right path and provision the right bandwidth so that magazine) in 1994 — and never much
transmissions would flow uninterrupted. Only the owners of liked by anyone in the marketing world
the networks could put the intelligence in place at the right — still remains the foundation of display
spots, and thus the Internet would become a value-added advertising on the Web.
service provided by the AT&Ts of the world, much like
ISDN before it. The rallying cry was “quality of service” And then there’s the audience.
(QoS). Only telcos could offer it, and as soon as consumers
demanded it, the telcos would win. At some never-quite-admitted level, the
demanded it, the telcos would win.

Web audience, however measurable, is
The opposing camp argued for “dumb” networks. Rather nevertheless a fraud. Nearly 60 percent
than cede control to the telcos to manage the path that bits of people find Web sites from search
took, argued its proponents, just treat the networks as dumb engines, much of which may be driven
pipes and let TCP/IP figure out the routing. So what if you by SEO, or “search engine optimization”
have to resend a few times, or the latency is all over the — a new-economy acronym that refers
place. Just keep building more capacity — “overprovision to gaming Google’s algorithm to land
bandwidth” — and it will be Good Enough. top results for hot search terms. In other
words, many of these people have been
On the underlying Internet itself, Good Enough has won. essentially corralled into clicking a
We stare at the spinning buffering disks on our YouTube random link and may have no idea why
videos rather than accept the Faustian bargain of some they are visiting a particular site — or,
Comcast/Google QoS bandwidth deal that we would indeed, what site they are visiting. They
invariably end up paying more for. Aside from some are the exact opposite of a loyal
corporate networks, dumb pipes are what the world wants audience, the kind that you might expect,
from telcos. The innovation advantages of an open over time, to inculcate with your
marketplace outweigh the limited performance advantages message.
of a closed system.
Web audiences have grown ever larger
But the Web is a different matter. The marketplace has even as the quality of those audiences
spoken: When it comes to the applications that run on top of has shriveled, leading advertisers to pay
the Net, people are starting to choose quality of service. We less and less to reach them. That, in turn,
want TweetDeck to organize our Twitter feeds because it’s has meant the rise of junk-shop content
more convenient than the Twitter Web page. The Google providers — like Demand Media —
Maps mobile app on our phone works better in the car than which have determined that the only way
the Google Maps Web site on our laptop. And we’d rather to make money online is to spend even
lean back to read books with our Kindle or iPad app than less on content than advertisers are
lean forward to peer at our desktop browser. willing to pay to advertise against it.
This further cheapens online content,
At the application layer, the open Internet has always been a makes visitors even less valuable, and
fiction. It was only because we confused the Web with the continues to diminish the credibility of
Net that we didn’t see it. The rise of machine-to-machine the medium.
communications — iPhone apps talking to Twitter APIs —
is all about control. Every API comes with terms of service, Even in the face of this downward spiral,
and Twitter, Amazon.com, Google, or any other company the despairing have hoped. But then
can control the use as they will. We are choosing a new came the recession, and the panic button
form of QoS: custom applications that just work, thanks to got pushed. Finally, after years of
cached content and local code. Every time you pick an experimentation, content companies
iPhone app instead of a Web site, you are voting with your came to a disturbing conclusion: The
finger: A better experience is worth paying for, either in Web did not work. It would never bring
cash or in implicit acceptance of a non-Web standard. in the bucks. And so they began looking
for a new model, one that leveraged the
power of the Internet without the value-
destroying side effects of the Web. And
they found Steve Jobs, who — rumor
had it — was working on a new tablet
device.
Now, on the technology side, what the

Web has lacked in its determination to
turn itself into a full-fledged media
format is anybody who knew anything
about media. Likewise, on the media
side, there wasn’t anybody who knew
anything about technology. This has
been a fundamental and aching
disconnect: There was no sublime
integration of content and systems, of
experience and functionality — no
clever, subtle, Machiavellian overarching
design able to create that codependent
relationship between audience, producer,
and marketer.
In the media world, this has taken the form of a Jobs perfectly fills that void. Other technologists
shift from ad-supported free content to freemium have steered clear of actual media businesses,
— free samples as marketing for paid services — seeing themselves as renters of systems and
with an emphasis on the “premium” part. On the third-party facilitators, often deeply wary of any
Web, average CPMs (the price of ads per thousand involvement with content. (See, for instance,
impressions) in key content categories such as news Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s insistence that his
are falling, not rising, because user-generated pages company is not in the content business.) Jobs, on
are flooding Facebook and other sites. The the other hand, built two of the most successful
assumption had been that once the market matured, media businesses of the past generation: iTunes,
big companies would be able to reverse the a content distributor, and Pixar, a movie studio.
hollowing-out trend of analog dollars turning into Then, in 2006, with the sale of Pixar to Disney,
digital pennies. Sadly that hasn’t been the case for Jobs becomes the biggest individual shareholder
most on the Web, and by the looks of it there’s no in one of the world’s biggest traditional media
light at the end of that tunnel. Thus the shift to the conglomerates — indeed much of Jobs’ personal
app model on rich media platforms like the iPad, wealth lies in his traditional media holdings.
where limited free content drives subscription
revenue (check out Wired’s cool new iPad app!). In fact, Jobs had, through iTunes, aligned himself
with traditional media in a way that Google has
The Web won’t take the sequestering of its always resisted. In Google’s open and distributed
commercial space easily. The defenders of the model, almost anybody can advertise on nearly
unfettered Web have their hopes set on HTML5 — any site and Google gets a cut — its interests are
the latest version of Web-building code that offers with the mob. Apple, on the other hand, gets a
applike flexibility — as an open way to satisfy the cut any time anybody buys a movie or song —
desire for quality of service. If a standard Web its interests are aligned with the traditional
browser can act like an app, offering the sort of content providers. (This is, of course, a
clean interface and seamless interactivity that iPad complicated alignment, because in each deal,
users want, perhaps users will resist the trend to the Apple has quickly come to dominate the
paid, closed, and proprietary. But the business relationship.)
forces lining up behind closed platforms are big and
getting bigger. This is seen by many as a battle for So it’s not shocking that Jobs’ iPad-enabled
the soul of the digital frontier. vision of media’s future looks more like media’s
past. In this scenario, Jobs is a mogul straight out
Zittrain argues that the demise of the all- of the studio system. While Google may have
encompassing, wide-open Web is a dangerous controlled traffic and sales, Apple controls the
thing, a loss of open standards and services that are content itself. Indeed, it retains absolute approval
“generative” — that allow people to find new uses rights over all third-party applications. Apple
for them. “The prospect of tethered appliances and controls the look and feel and experience. And,
software as service,” he warns, “permits major what’s more, it controls both the content-delivery
regulatory intrusions to be implemented as minor system (iTunes) and the devices (iPods, iPhones,
technical adjustments to code or requests to service and iPads) through which that content is
providers.” consumed.
But what is actually emerging is not quite the bleak Since the dawn of the commercial Web,
future of the Internet that Zittrain envisioned. It is technology has eclipsed content. The new
only the future of the commercial content side of business model is to try to let the content — the
the digital economy. Ecommerce continues to thrive product, as it were — eclipse the technology.
on the Web, and no company is going to shut its Jobs and Zuckerberg are trying to do this like
Web site as an information resource. More old-media moguls, fine-tuning all aspects of their
important, the great virtue of today’s Web is that so product, providing a more designed, directed, and
much of it is noncommercial. The wide-open Web polished experience. The rising breed of exciting
of peer production, the so-called generative Web Internet services — like Spotify, the hotly
where everyone is free to create what they want, anticipated streaming music service; and Netflix,
continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary which lets users stream movies directly to their
incentives of expression, attention, reputation, and computer screens, Blu-ray players, or Xbox 360s
the like. But the notion of the Web as the ultimate — also pull us back from the Web. We are
marketplace for digital delivery is now in doubt. returning to a world that already exists — one in
which we chase the transformative effects of
The Internet is the real revolution, as important as music and film instead of our brief (relatively
electricity; what we do with it is still evolving. As it speaking) flirtation with the transformative
moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature effects of the Web.
of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open
Web was an adolescent phase subsidized by After a long trip, we may be coming home.
industrial giants groping their way in a new world.
Now they’re doing what industrialists do best — Michael Wolff (michael@burnrate.com) is a new
finding choke points. And by the looks of it, we’re contributing editor for Wired. He is also a
loving it. columnist for Vanity Fair and the founder of
Newser, a news-aggregation site.
Editor in chief Chris Anderson
(canderson@wired.com) wrote about the new
industrial revolution in issue 18.02.
An earlier version of the chart at the beginning of this article incorrectly listed the time span from 1995 to
2005. The correct time span is 1990 to 2010. The correct version appears in the print magazine.
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Aaron Alexander
Why make the analogy of the Web to a postcard? It makes more sense to think of it as a newspaper.
Hell, that *IS* why so many claim print to be dead, right? It's highly suspect that the article author
would ignore such a serious movement that has printers and newspaper chiefs worried. We've moved
to the Web.
Moreover, why choose such a touchy, excitable headline and blaster it, so far as print can blast,
while couching deep within the article, "We get the Web. It's part of our life." Why must I be forced
to read such blatant contradiction? What is Wired anyway? I've never bothered to look into its
funding, shareholders, etc., but now I am inclined to. This article seems like a trolling attempt.
Poor argument form and bad analogies aside, this article is irresponsible. Simply because more
people opt for this "info receptacle" with their "dollar votes" does not make it plausible that the
concept of "browsing" will go out the door. There is a time and place for being a rampant consumer
and their is a time and place for "browsing," or shouldn't we say, "previewing those gadgets and
gizmos that we are potential purchasers of"?
This article is absurd. Granted, it has very little to say about the technology of the Web, save for
mentioning HTML's role and a chart about technologies (JavaScript compared to a language that
caters to ONE proprietary device -- come on, Apple is good, but you have got to be kidding). But the
point here is that the Web, now, is the Open Web, the Semantic Web, the Standardized Web.
In an attempt to make a silly, ultimately trivial comment about the Web and its relation to capitalistic
mentalities, implicit or explicit, the author has provided fuel to the Microsofts and the enemies of the
open source, the W3C, the Linux community, etc movements. Now readers will be more inclined
think of the Web as a competitor of the proprietary gunk that happens to shift the market every once
and a while -- at the cost of missing the significance of the W3C, WHATWG, etc.
It makes no sense to put the Web in the fight against particular apps. The Web is more than what
consumers make of it. It is an attempt to diffuse the fight for the buck and bolster the fight for
ideology. We don't need more big companies framing their success in terms of revenue, but rather in
terms of intellectual agreement about the nature of technologies we invent and their influence on the
way we live our lives.
In an attempt to criticize, even if implicitly, the leaders of our industry, this article's author adds to
the confusion about what the Web represents.
"It is a mistake to think of the Web browser as the apex of the PC’s evolution." No. It is a mistake to
reduce the Web itself to the tool which enables us to interact with it (in the sense of adoption,
acceptance and deployment). It is a mistake to even make this statement. The Web isn't a Web
browser. How is this not obvious?
2 months ago 3 Likes Like Reply
DavidOliveros
The web is dead. The websites are alive. Torrents, Podcasts, Facebook, etcetera are alive.
¿Will you search THE website or A website? (Will you search X website or will you search
[Website]).
The subtle difference is the intention; Getting means having an objective. Exploring
(Searching) means freedom. Getting can be controlled, can be induced, can be conditioned to
yourself. The extasis of finding without really looking for it; Searching what you doesn't know
yet, the fulfilling pleasure of sailing the Web is long lost. StumbleUpon.com is profiting from
this death.
The transferred bits, has nothing to do with the Web, except for the technological sense; The
web is the free space, existing inside the internet protocols. Everyone can be part of the Web.
Everyone can open notepad, code as he will, and open up the services in his own computer,
but there's no Web (There IS the Web, but it's dead. ¿You got the point?).
That web site exist, and its part of the web, but the web is dead in the sense that nobody is IN
the web anymore. There's no sailer in the ocean of the Web, but surfers in the seas of blogs,
social networks; the sea of the gadget. Your notepad site exists in a death ocean. The new
boats, the new spaces are those hard-coded, hard-limited not in a technological sense;
Facebook, Twitter, Ipad, RSS's, Etcetera. "You've spent the day on the Internet — but not on
the Web". New spaces are grown; Social media networks, Music networks, Facebook, Blogs,
Apps, Gadgets, but the web as some knew it, is dead. It doesn't implies the new spaces are
worse.
"It makes no sense to put the Web in the fight against particular apps." ¿Who's putting the
Web in the fight against particular apps? Let that fight for the capitalists; Without them and
their struggles, there would be no change nor progress in a technological sense.
With this on mind, try reading the article one more time.
David Oliveros (Mexico)
1 month ago in reply to Aaron Alexander Like Reply
AnilMaheshwari
Just a dolled up article on convergence! Why have you wasted so many words?
Anil Maheshwari (India)
1 month ago in reply to Aaron Alexander Like Reply
Aaron Alexander
Great, thought police. How is your reply any less trivial that the s'posed "wasted
words"? Your reply is tantamount to dissenting in a third grade class room, "Why is
mathematics important anyway?" And even if it's true that it is "dolled up", does this
demand that I not write about it?
It's a discussion. Why don't you just discuss? What else are we going to do on this
damn site? It's worth a bloody shot, right?
2 weeks ago in reply to AnilMaheshwari 1 Like Like Reply
tinacart
Okay, Wired.com...if you're so convinced the Web is dead, then put your money where your mouth
is: shut down your website permanently. I triple-dog-dare ya.
Webcam Sex, WebcamVice.com
lol, this is a challenge too big.
1 month ago in reply to tinacart Like Reply
mgerring
Yeah. I'll bet Conde Nast really, really wishes all of this were true, especially that self-indulgent bit
about how the media empires of yesteryear can come back and crush those barbarians at the gates.
I can almost hear your editors and owners gloating from behind that graf, salivating at the possibility
that anyone is going to take it seriously, and for a return to the days of top-down media control that
nobody except for them wants to return to.
This article is staggering for the number of times it says something that is simply not true, most
jarringly in the opening paragraph, a barrage of things I do from my web browser that you insist I do
not do from my web browser. I get the impression that for as much as you are explaining something,
you are also trying to conjure it into being. And some of us just aren't stupid enough to fall for that.
You give two small mentions to HTML5 in this whole article, and you don't explain what it is or
what it can do. You talk about the age of web applications as if it had already come and gone, when
in reality it's only just started. I don't think this is an accident, as Conde Nast would much rather
have the Web disappear entirely than be forced to actually innovate.
You will be proven wrong, just like Wired was in 1997. And you can take that iPad app and stick it
up your ass.
swagval
Weak. Really weak logic. If apps and their monetization were everything, we'd still be using desktop
software to do everything. Companies like Peoplesoft would have never survived.
The only reason apps are popular is because, like the desktop Web browser of 1998, the interface
controls suck and are completely limiting. Once that improves, there's going to be no idiotic sense to
making a custom application for each mobile platform for each Web site a user visits. That's just
ridiculous, and we're in a ridiculous transitional moment in time because of it.
You confused the means for the ends here.
DavidOliveros
We're not talking about web sites here. Understand what "The Web" means first. Look behind
the monetization of the apps, and understand the article.
1 month ago in reply to swagval Like Reply
Hank
This article is a lengthy exploration of an improperly framed argument. The web is dead because
more bits are moved via BitTorrent and Skype Calls? Judging the business significance of the web
by volume of bits moved is like measuring the importance of a new technology by its physical
weight. It's not how many bits move through each protocol that matters it's which bits. You cite
Skype, Pandora and Netflix as examples of this "post-web" trend, but each one of these companies
has a website which is used for some of the company's most important features (like payment). The
app/web difference is only a means to an end. You are confusing a short-term shift in delivery
mechanism with a long-term shift in business model. How un-Wired of you.
ericlr
This is about the 1,000th time that Wired has proclaimed the death of the Web since the mid-90's,
and yet here it still is, alive and kicking.
tomreavey
This article reads like an Apple advertisement (typical Wired to ass kiss Apple). As others mentioned
apps are just tools to access web content. This article was by far the worst, most disillusioned I've
read from Wired.
idiganalytics
"The "WorldWideWeb" is a "web" of "hypertext documents" viewed by "browsers" using a client–

server architecture." (ref 1990, Berners-Lee, Cailliau - http://www.w3.org/Proposal.htm... As such,
Facebook, Youtube, Google et al *are* the Web. None would work without hypertext transfer
protocol (http)!
The article is misleading, and the graphic grossly so - comparing apples to oranges: FTP, eMail,
newsgroups? None of those employ http!!
None of us can get to anything on the internet without addressable points (URIs, URLs) and a way to
view content, whether words or video (HTML). "The Web is Dead" is a sensationalist headline that I
find deeply offensive - insulting to my intelligence and that of the millions of others who do digital
deeds.
The article did offer interesting discourse - but at what price? Ignoble sir, retract! Unless you do, we
will all believe you really are the idiot this article makes you seem.
spacecat
You guys are SUCH drama queens. Anyone would think that a call had gone out to boost newsstand
sales by plonking a large, alarming proclamation in stark black letters on a vivid red cover ..
tattoobox
The "web" as a term was always there to describe the truth behind the internet. a single line that goes
to a junction then connects to three lines that meet their junctions then connects to nine lines and
their junctions, and so on into infinity. However in the 90's there really was no infinity. There
literally was an end of the internet. In the early days, you could see all the site there was to see. it just
would have taken you until now to have done so with your dial up connection. Now we have far
more advanced coding, search algorithms, and juiced up boxes to connect/upload/download at speeds
unfathomable 30 years ago. Not to mention the peripherals, webcam, messaging devices, mobile
devices, web reactive everything. nothing that plugs into the wall now does so without a counterpart
somewhere doing it in wireless. Forgot to turn off your TV, do it by Iphone App while you're digging
into that chicken bucket at KFC.
If the web of the late 80s early 90s was like a spiders web, then the web we have today is like
nothing we can describe in those terms. It should be that the "Web" is dead because it is obsolete in
context. what we have now is more like a chrysalis of a butterfly, just if that "chrysalis" was
surrounding 6,889,129,025(world population) people and made from 6,845,609,960(internet
population) threads of silk.
Yoshi ~ www.tattooboxmontreal.com/blog
4 months ago 1 Like Like Reply
recoveringtechie
The graph is very misleading, it tries to correlate usage with importance which is just plain wrong. If
importance were factored then DNS would have the largest slice of all because none of the other
stuff would work without it. Of course video and p2p are larger, that content takes more bandwidth.
Duh. While some of the other points are valid, the use of this sort of illustration turns me off from
the overall message.
kgsbca
1) That's a five year old graph. Using the ipad to illustrate that dedicated apps are displacing the
browser makes no sense, as it didn't exist five years ago, and even today, it is probably responsible
for less than 1% of internet traffic.
2) A facebook or twitter app is still connecting to a web server somewhere. It's still using the web.
3) Using bits transferred as a measure of how the internet is being used is not accurate, as "apps" like
video (which are accessed through web browsers) consume far more badnwidth than html, yet for
each video watched, it is possible that 100 web pages are accessed. Last time I checked, Youtube is a
website that uses static web servers (web 1.0 technology) to present all those videos that consume all
that bandwidth.
This article is just another example of Chris Anderson desperately trying to be like Malcolm
Gladwell - a guy who gets media attention by abusing statistics to make inferences that just aren't
true. I'm guessing if he wasn't the editor, articles like this would never get published.
olinhyde
Brilliant assessment. I think the article failed to address the larger issues of how "Big Data" and 15+
years of noise pollution from SEO have created evolutionary pressure for a semantic Web 3.0 to
evolve.
Newtonizer
I'm all for it. Replace the browser, bring on the apps. Whatever, let's just move forward, always.
luispeaze
Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff you two are on the too fast lane trying to grab the trees half body
out the window downhill aimslessly. Have you tried to enjoy the ride instead? This is Luís Peazê
who came all the way down up from the late 1970´s where computers had about 12k of memory and
I used to write love letters in alphanumeric and hexadecimal.
Angryrider
I say the web is dead because it represents both a treasure trove and maybe a garbage dump of
information. It is something that we can use to learn more about the world we live in. With all these
apps and programs designed to mostly entertain us and connect us through trivial things, the web is
being pushed down into soft peat.
knightmt
I think you are building castles in the air.
cultdream, http://seathings.bandcamp.com/ <-- get my debut album (21 trax) 4 free
long live the web actually ...
6 days ago Like Reply
MattW
Why would anyone in their right mind switch from a no-cost browser to a collection of paid
subscription apps?
3 weeks ago Like Reply
Shantel11
I DONT BELIEVE THE WEB IS DEAD BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT HAVE APPLE
ITEMS STILL USE THE WEB. BUT I FEEL THAT IF YOU THINK THE WEB IS DEAD YOU
SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, BECAUSE APPLE IS WORTH A LOT BUT WE DONT
HOW LONG APPLE ITEMS WILL BE AROUND AND WE NEED THE WEB IT MAKES IT
EASIER ON US TO DO EVERYTHING
1 month ago Like Reply
Lauren Winton
Here's a great interview with Georgia Archer on her film "Barbershop Punk" and Net Neutrality,
from the National Conference for Media Reform: http://www.livestream.com/free...
ZephyrSP
Michael Wolff is doing guest articles for Wired?
My overall opinion of Wired just took a serious nosedive.

This guy is the reason I stopped going to Newser.
I see he's still as pompous and self-righteous as ever, and has managed to increase his ability to write
insubstantial but grandiose claims about any and everything.
This article is as misguided and misleading now as it was half a year ago.
devolute
"At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader..."
Wait, I thought the same sort of people telling me that the web was dead were telling me RSS was
dead. Make up your damn minds!
wisdom
dhf
firecracker pearl
top-drilled pearl
dancing pearl
2 months ago Like Reply
Victor Marinov
Making conclusions about the usage of the Web vs Video (which is more often than not embeded in
webpages) based on bandwidth usage is ridiculous. That's like comparing the entire WIRED website
usage to a happy birthday video on youtube with 10 views.
Meditation Walk
The article & comments are much needed and if you mean the "Web is Dead" it probably has never
lived yet ..as in free speech drowning in shit, you are right ...as surviving media activists "for open
and free public access to public media " that created / originated the prototypes for what are now
called web pages, we were predicting and warning of the inevitable military industrial dis-ease
establishment media monopoly control of The Matrix back in '72
...the points about bandwidth vs. usage that many of the commentators keep reiterating is base on the
mistaken assumption that "the web" is the "internet" ...like "intercourse" is the same as "procreation"
...it is not.
Simply put ...you have to pay extra for commercial bandwidth and that means you lose free speech
because the bandwidth hogs clog your channels with info noise and info overload..."THEY" and
"THEM" vampire suck our intellectual property then "marginalize,quarantine,homogenize then clone
it" and sell it back to us at $60 - $80 per month ...the brave new world ...entertaining us to death
...this is not a living Web but a cesspool...so sink or swim you gotta pay ...
http://GeorgeKasey.com
Anthony Meikle
Very interesting article - resulted in a lot of positive and negative comments - what do you think?
markbrown4
That graph is completely ridiculous. Your distinction is moot. The chief web standards will exist in
some form for longer than I will.
MarcOliver
When the web is dead – when did the website died?
riyadsoft
good
unplu
I couldn’t find a direct link for the sources behind your graph by following your reference to ‘Cisco
estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko’. Could you provide a direct link to the
numbers? Many thanks.
eforblue
"The web is dead!" I use that sentence in my cover letter when I am looking for a new job lately....
mdobbs
Great read and food for thought. Take it with a grain of salt yes!
- per JPP's comment: "Interesting article – however it’s based on a flawed premise. Traffic volume
does not equal usage. For example this page, compressed, is about 60KB a single youtube video is
100 times that but takes the same amount of time to digest. If you want to understand usage you need
to look at how much time a users spend on each activity not on how many bytes gets sent."h
Regardless, gets the brain moving about what opportunities are coming beyond HTTP/web.
ReaM
Well, let's not forget, that VIDEO takes a LOT more traffic compared to web. Which means, the
traffic is higher for the same time a user spends on web. In the end it means, the 51% of traffic used
by video is FAR LESS user activities than the 23% of web browsing.
Peer to Peer means video games?
samuelrealtalk
Kinda far out there if you ask me!
iPathSolutions
Finally, someone who gets it. Websites were commercialized over 15 years ago. Yes, a website for
brand presence but functionality must move to Apps. Apple has even made the keyboard an App.
What will die next: Email (we use it to do everything...like using Excel to do everything), BlackBerry
(along with middle management), Cable companies (they will no longer program you and fill your
day with bad shows...you will be in charge of what, when and where you get your video content),
Poor Productivity (corporations will finally spend dollars on computers that work - Macs)
hannibal64
I wonder if that graph above is based on users or bandwidth usage. I suspect it is the latter.
That said: since the Internet is dragging everyone in, it shouldn't surprise us that groups of users with
different priorities are now being served with a variety of applications and ways of accessing the
resources of the web. It has become a globalized extension of our impulse to form communities.
erickmott
This cover story certainly got my attention and helps to sell magazines off the rack.
I first saw this as a Facebook post from either a friend or Mashable; can't remember who but it really
doesn't matter. Scanned the article via social media and then a few days later I saw it in the San
Francisco Airport (SFO) on my way to a Sitecore Summit in Copenhagen. Bought the magazine and
took a picture of the cover via my iPhone -- emailed it to our CMO to indicate I would touch on this
point of view during an executive presentation regarding traditional and digital media integration.
Read the article on the plane, updated my PPT to highlight how the Web has evolved with iterations
(i.e. orginal Web, Web 2.0, social Web, mobile Web and real-time Web) and to make the distinction
between Web (presentation/interaction/commerce) and Internet (IP/TCP).
Absolutely true that "apps" on smartphones and elsewhere are growing in popularity and
consumption. But let's remember that people, businesses and organizations will always rely on public
websites and digital experiences that are intended to communicate, engage, support transactions, and
help grow and serve communities online and off.
By the way, the experience I descibed above with this Wired article and point of view could only
have happened with relevant/great content and the Web as a primary enabler.
JuanPerez
I think part of the confusion is that the article seems to be discussing Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as it
relates to Personal Information Management and Personal Information Managers. I don't believe the
Web is actually dead but morphing into something new. To navigate and interact in the new
environment the requirement will be a comprehensive Personal Interactive Information Management
Site (PIIMS)which uses both the internet and applications.
RogerWilson
Curious how most of the commentary seems to be about Anderson's side of the peice not Wolff's
This is all pretty good biz-entertainment even if it is not reliable information http://bit.ly/aintdeadyet
thedeterminator
come on... this article is bogus. I mean, yes iphones and apps are getting more and more popular. It
doesn't take a research analyst to figure that out. So web designers like me are going to be on the
streets in five years? I doubt it. The web will never go away. It is here to stay. Since when is html,
php and flash ever going to go away? I better email fullsail.edu and tell them they are teaching out of
date products. This article is making a bold claim.
DavidOliveros
Don't forget you're a Web Site designer, not a Web Designer. There's a huge difference.
1 month ago in reply to thedeterminator Like Reply
heyitsminic
@howardlindzon and @cdixon on The Web is Dead http://stk.ly/cFoA7o
njsmyth
I disagree with many of those commenting in that I think this is an important trend and that we will
lose opportunities for shared/open spaces as Internet use becomes more and more fragmented.
Thanks to the authors in writing an article that has generated a lot of thought (and responses!). I've
written more about my reactions here: If The Web is Really Dead, What Have We Lost?:
http://njsmyth.wordpress.com/2...
fbagirov
As the front end role of the mobile becomes bigger than PC, the role of mobile apps does grow.
However, there are few factors:
1) adoption - according to the various polls, users and companies prefer mobile sites to mobile
applications, at least for now.
2) costs - it is cheaper to build a mobile website that is browsable by iPhone, Android and other
platforms, rather than application for each of them, especially the non-open ones like iPhoneOS.
Companies already made huge investments into their websites, and some would not even exist
(online businesses) if there wouldn't be a web.
3) The web is a layer that makes easier to navigate the internet, and will not go away .
Of course, user adoption will decide how fast, if at all, the web will go away.
1sai
Seems like John Chambers had his hands on that chart, showing video traffic! Besides that, I
personally think the article is true from a blind users point of view. The web will always be there -
rather pushed into background as a distributed vault.
BrianSmith
If you play this podcast backwards it sounds like Chris is saying "Paul is Dead"....
michaeldaehn
"Wired declares the Web is dead - people are using applications instead."
@Poet_Tweets on Twitter
stiemark
Why does Chris Anderson keep using phrases like "open web" vs "closed platform" and "free" vs
"paid services" to try and differentiate the web and apps? Whether I use the built in Mail app or
Google Mobile on my iPhone or use gmail.com in a browser, I'm still hitting the same closed system
that is Gmail. The same exact server farm will deliver a video from YouTube whether it's being
requested by a YouTube app or a Flash widget in my browser. Ditto for Facebook statuses. Ditto for
eBay auctions. Ditto for FarmVille crops. Ditto for Twitter tweets. They're all free however I access
them. If anything, i would argue that these apps have given us freedom. I can now sit in front of my
computer and bid on an eBay auction, walk away and continue to monitor it from my phone whether
I'm on the couch or the beach. I'm not shackled to my desk any more. Now THAT'S open.
john_titor
I think I'm going to start using the word "web" exclusively when referring to the aethersphere, just to
be a dick.
RogerWilson
The Web Ain't Dead http://bit.ly/aintdead but we should prepare for another long tale!
deannalawrence
Thank you Wired...Simply Thank you!
incogito
"Radio has no future." - Lord Kelvin, 1897.
hansoloz
did the cell phone "die" when the iphone hit the market? the title of the article really should be
"rebirth of the web"...
sabatizer
Paging Edward Tufte...

I would love to see a revised chart that shows the growth of total volume of internet traffic, broken
down by percentage. I suspect web use is growing, just not in proportion to other internet uses.
Even more, I'd like to see a chart that shows volume based on task. For example visiting twenty web
pages might create as much traffic as watching one video. Is it fair to imply a video is more
important than a webpage simply because the video moves more bits?
rgrossi
Looking at traffic doesn't show the whole picture though. A 15 minute video I just watched could
use 100mb of data, but the 15 minutes I spent reading this HTML article was probably only 1k of
data. But looking at a chart of where the traffic is going it would seem that people spend much more
time watching videos than reading some text which takes up much less space.
jammele
I totally agree with Chris Anderson. I wrote on the same subject on my blog in April immediately
after I got my iPad. The post "iPad is the Google Killer" has many of the same themes. Once you get
over your fear of the Web being on of many ways we'll access the internet, you'll see the truth.
http://melesmusings.com/2010/0...
Blackjack
Just got my Wired mag in the mail yesterday 8/22. This was the cover article and the cover graphic
and it was posted on the web about a week before my mag came. It used to be that paying subscribers
would get additional articles. Then it went to the point that we would at least get the articles first.
Now we get the articles after everyone else gets them for free. So, now what am i paying for? It
doesn't seem like the Web is dead, it seems like my subscription to WIRED will soon be dead.
turnip
Facebook is not an app. It's a web site. There is an (ch)iphone app. 45m (ch)iphones != 500m
facebook users! There is an (ch)ipad app. 5m (ch)ipads != 500m facebook users! etc. etc. Might have
been an interesting article if not so overstated.
wroadd
What is the measurement unit of y-axis on the first diagram? Numbers of started download per year,
data size, percentage of used bandwidth?
josephrot
Why all this fuss ?
The Web is the vehicle or backbone transport system, and the apps are amongst the varying digital
items that are transported. In the past, current and future, it has, does and will "do" or be even more,
which is exactly what's expected.
So what of it ?
DavidOliveros
Thats the internet, not the Web. Long live the internet!
1 month ago in reply to josephrot Like Reply
remko232
Perhaps it will take some time before I fully realize the importance of this article but for now
understanding that "the notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery is now in
doubt." is an open door as this is an continuous daily life situation. Things change due to different
views or insight. That's normal. And so it is equally normal with the internet. Perhaps now we see
that for specific information people are willing to pay (as in apps) and the web will be used for other
things like reading very long articles in two rows like the above and/or companies will use it as one
way of servicing their customers (helpdesk, selling stuff, beholding reputation and gain profit from
that and so many other things. New thoughts, new principles. Some could call it evolution. Again,
perhaps the article will give a backwards insight in some time. For now I wish everyone the best of
luck and use whatever suits you. The business people will get to you anyway. And that's OK.
cduwel
I would have liked to read the article about "The Web is Dead" but due to the fancy formatting I was
unable to make a copy in Word and print it out. Let me know when it's available in a more reader
friendly format.
Thanks
mesoameric
We are going to have to fight to retain open standards and peer-to-peer performance without
penalization (i.e. network neutrality), given the hierarchy/vertical-monopoly-building forces at work.
Ironically, it was these very open standards and peer/edge dominated architecture that allowed the
now-monopolies to forge their new business models in the first place. Now they will want to make
deals with pipe-providers to prioritize their traffic. We need to keep the ability to
ride a horse across the open range and camp there, even as the
climate-controlled pneumatic pod-train tubes start to dominate the net landscape.
silnan
A counter example to this debate

The web is dead?
aaronfield
Well...It is not dead and I don't think it will going to dead anytime. I don't know the future of it.But
it's become a part of our life.
Bankruptcy
jav1231
That should ensure people pontificate for awhile.
saritascarlett
I do have a problem with the basic argument of this theory, you cannot compare the traffic generated
by videos with that produced by pages, which is by far insignificant. This comparison cannot be
made by using traffic statistics which deep down use "bytes" as measure. I am not taking sides here,
but please use something relevant.
cameleo_salamander
Can't say anything really now, what I wanted to express have already been said by others. I don't
agree with the author.
o1iver
@wanderlost: the author distinguishes between the web and the net. What he means is that the twitter
app is using the net (to communicate with the server). but the user is not actually using the web (in
the traditional sense).
@lpress: I think many people use applications to use YouTube these days (ex: YouTube for iPhone)
and in that sense are not using the web, but the net (^^). Anyway it doesn't matter. Watching
YouTube is not using the web in the sense that you are surfing from site to site. Is Facebook a
website or an application. I am not sure the distinction is clear these days...Yes it uses HTML, but it
feels more like an application than a traditional website.
I must say that I agree with the author in this case. I am a power user, yet still find myself accessing
the same few sites 90% of the time. Maybe Facebook, Gmail and YouTube are websites (in port 80
sense), but to me they are no longer websites but rather application.
adoo
It's all evolution. Dial-up used to be the greatest thing since slice bread. Now it rarely used or
promoted. These fads such as Blackberry, G3 and G4 will come and go but it all comes down to one
thing. An exchange of information. The tremendous progress this technology has achieved can be
difficult to keep up with. Prince stated a few weeks ago that the internet is over. Myself, I don't even
own a cell phone. I'll stick with a desk-top for now.
awnpromo
I think the author is making a rather clear distintion between the web and the internet. People are
turning more to mobile devices and apps to search, but the more traditional methods of typing in a
url or doing a search still apply.
angelux
I think you are right, but in a very centralized way, this is just for certain places. Here in México is
just not true. It is true that it went down but it is not dying. There are still a lot of sites that capture
all the audiences and the only thing happening here is that the web is becoming just for certain
amount of people; like everything it had a boom in the year 2000 because it was the "new" toy, but
the usability didn't ended. And just so you know, not every person in the world has a smartphone,
ipad or gadgets like that, would like to have one, but don't. I'm just typing this so everybody knows
that there are more people in the internet that aren't familiar with this kind of life you are suggesting.
In the end you have a point, just not as big as you made me think it is.
wanderlost
The look and usability of the Web is evolving, dead it is not
what kgbsc said earlier on:
2) A facebook or twitter app is still connecting to a web server somewhere. It’s still using the web.
3) Using bits transferred as a measure of how the internet is being used is not accurate, as “apps”
like video (which are accessed through web browsers) consume far more badnwidth than html, yet
for each video watched, it is possible that 100 web pages are accessed. Last time I checked, Youtube
is a website that uses static web servers (web 1.0 technology) to present all those videos that consume
all that bandwidth.
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The Web Is Dead. Long Live The Internet - Magazine

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The Web Is Dead.

Long Live the Internet | Magazine 5/19/11 2:12 PM

Sources: Cisco estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko

The Web Is Dead? A Debate

Who’s to Blame: Who’s to Blame:

“Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still

space” and “headlines sent to a pager” — but

Illustration: Dirk Fowler

less than a quarter of the traffic on

rolled up the others, and today there

Indeed, there has hardly ever been a

Now it’s the Web’s turn to face the

As Jonathan L. Zittrain puts it in

How to Stop It, “It is a mistake to

Blame human nature. As much as we

demanded it, the telcos would win.

Now, on the technology side, what the

Pages: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 | Full Page | Next

Author Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science

The Web Is Dead? A Debate

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David Oliveros (Mexico)

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lol, this is a challenge too big.

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You confused the means for the ends here.

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"The "WorldWideWeb" is a "web" of "hypertext documents" viewed by "browsers" using a client–

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I think you are building castles in the air.

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long live the web actually ...

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Michael Wolff is doing guest articles for Wired?

My overall opinion of Wired just took a serious nosedive.