Richard Martin Blog: The Web Is Dead — Far Out!

Wired editor Chris Anderson, a virtuoso at constructing elaborate arguments out of simple premises, is back with a new cover story headlined “The Web is Dead."

“Over the past few years," Anderson wrote, “one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display."

As examples, Anderson cites “the iPhone/iPad juggernaut" along with “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." To one degree or another these are all “semiclosed" applications, Anderson argues. The implications are broad: the rise of quasi-monopolies (i.e., Facebook, iTunes, Twitter), the end of the frontier days of the Wild, Wild Web, and the increasing willingness of consumers to pay for stuff that not so long ago was free: “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."

Anticipating the counter-argument that this is a distinction without a difference, Anderson strenuously asserts that this is not only an epochal shift, but an unfortunate one: It’s “a battle for the soul of the digital frontier," he says in vintage Wired prose (disclosure: I have written off and on for Wired for many years, and Chris Anderson is an acquaintance), and “The dark side of network effects is that rich nodes get richer."

At the highest level I agree with this argument, and with Anderson’s belief that it’s a natural evolution, from experimentation to commercialization. Most people, after all, don’t care whether their iTunes library or their digital copy of The New York Times arrives via a Web browser or via a dedicated app; they just want it to arrive, when and how and on which device they choose. As Anderson points out, IP-based, “semiclosed" apps are better at delivering such content (not to mention at delivering revenues to the creators) than the wide-open Web.

There are a couple of holes in the argument, though, that can lead to very different conclusions. No. 1 is that, as the Web gives way to specialized apps delivered over proprietary networks, monopolies become inevitable. “A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others," he writes. “It happens every time."

As historical examples, he cites the railroads, the electric power industry and telecom. “This is the natural path of industrialization," he writes, “invention, propagation, adoption, control."

The telecom industry, however, is now experiencing the opposite effect from Anderson’s Darwinian view of economic history: Control is being ceded by the incumbent carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and BT to a raft of startups who offer IP-based services. Skype – one of the “semiclosed" apps that Anderson views as the advent of a more monopolized, for-fee online environment – is the premier example of a startup that is wreaking havoc among the established players, while delivering extremely popular services at far cheaper prices than the establishment is accustomed to charging. Skype, which did not exist eight years ago, now accounts for more than 13 percent of all international voice traffic. Try telling executives at, say, AT&T, that the “death of the Web" is leading to a more structured, controllable universe in which a few of the largest players rule. The same goes for broadband Internet access: While the core of the Internet is still controlled by a few major network providers, a host of startups are finding a way to bypass the core altogether and route traffic via peripheral routes, leading to an explosion of growth that nobody controls.

The second flaw in Anderson’s argument is that the death of the Web – or, more accurately, its declining share of overall traffic on the wider Internet – is somehow regrettable. Another way of describing the new-style, application-based services Anderson describes is “sophisticated," as opposed to the wooly, often frustrating world of the Web. How many times have you given up on a YouTube video because it took so long to load? Would you pay a minimal fee – a few cents per video, or a buck-a-month subscription – to watch YouTube videos in instantly downloading high-def with HD audio? A lot of people would. Where’s the downside in that?

A more immediate comparison than the railroads, or telecom, to the current evolution of the Internet, is TV. There’s a reason that better than 82 percent of all U.S. households now have some form of pay-TV subscription: Pay TV is a better, richer, more sophisticated experience than old-fashioned three-networks-and-a-cloud-of-static TV, and the economics are such that the providers can charge fees that people are willing to pay, while making profits. (Though that business model is also soon to be overwhelmed by the Internet, in the form of IPTV.)

Online services are going the same way. The Web isn’t dying; it’s expanding at an exponential rate. The fact that it’s shrinking as a percentage of overall digital traffic is a cause for celebration, not lament.