The Web’s Inventor Raises Funds to Build a New Internet

Tim Berners-LeeOpens a new window , the British academic who invented the World Wide Web, is working on plans for another internet revolution.

This week, his start-up company Inrupt, which helps people control their own online data, announcedOpens a new window a $6.2 million investment from Octopus Ventures.

His vision is to create a free, decentralized, open internet run by users for common benefit rather than one controlled by big corporations and governments.

A new model for the internet

Berners-Lee says the internet is at a “critical tipping point” and requires a new model for how people access services.

Users now must hand over their personal data to digital giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter in exchange for services.

“As we have all discovered, this hasn’t been in our best interests,” Berners-Lee says in a blogOpens a new window . He believes that today’s internet puts too much power in the hands of technology corporations.

He was particularly incensedOpens a new window by Facebook’s selling personal data for political advertising favorable to Donald Trump in the 2016 election when it was revealed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Controlling your own data

To address the problem, Inrupt helps people manage their own data. The start-up supports a platform called SolidOpens a new window , which Berners-Lee and his associates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been developing for several years.

Rather than big tech companies “owning” people’s data and storing it on their servers, Solid allows users to control their own personal online data by storing it on “Pods” hosted on servers run by Solid.

Apps developed on the Solid platform can access the data with the user’s permission, allowing the creation of a whole new ecosystem of privacy-first apps and services.

This gives control over the services that access personal data back to the individual. It allows people to share data with others and for different apps to access the same data at once. Instead of data stored on Facebook being used for one set of uses, a variety of platforms could use the same data set for different purposes.

A wealth of opportunities

“Solid unleashes incredible opportunities for creativity, problem-solving and commerce,” says Berners-Lee. “It will empower individuals, developers and businesses with entirely new ways to conceive, build and find innovative, trusted and beneficial applications and services.” It could include innovations which he claims are “not possible on today’s web.”

The roleOpens a new window of Inrupt, which is based in Boston and employs some 20 people, is to support Solid and host free pods to help developers create apps. It will also fund the creation of apps itself.

It’s unclear how it will make money. If the idea takes off, the “freemium” advertising and data-driven business model which has built companies such as Google and Facebook would be disrupted.

Many apps and storage services might charge users or swap data access for free services. But the choice would be in the hands of the users. It would mark a change from offering “free” services but at the price of giving away personal data hidden away in lengthy terms and conditions contracts.

A free, open internet

A major advantage of the new approach would be the ability to have all information and data such as calendar, emails, social media and videos stored on one page controlled by the user rather than having to access many different apps.

Solid claims to have about 1,200 members of its community so far, with 30 open-source developers building apps on the platform. Services created include management apps, messaging tools, contact managers and social apps.

Just as the World Wide Web didn’t cause much of a stir when Berners-Lee first hatched it in 1989, Solid has yet to make waves. But if concerns about data privacyOpens a new window and the scale of the tech giants’ power continue to grow, there could one day be a mass transition to what Berners-Lee calls the “new web.”

In the long run, a free, open and democratic internet may become inevitable as people grow more comfortable with the idea of taking control of their own data. That would seriously dent the power of the big technology corporations.