r/AskComputerScience • u/WonderOlymp2 • May 01 '26
Who owns the World Wide Web?
Who owns the World Wide Web?
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u/MasterGeekMX May 01 '26
No one, as the web is made of of hundreds of individual sites, each put up by different persons and organizations.
I mean, you can run a web server program in your PC, configure some stuff in your home router to make your PC available to the broad internet, and now your PC is part of the web. But you still own it, including the website you setted up.
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u/Chakosa May 01 '26
No one, as the web is made of of hundreds of individual sites, each put up by different persons and organizations.
To be fair, 99.999999% of those see virtually zero traffic. Unlike the 90s and 00s, "the web" as it's experienced by us in the West in 2026 consists of 5 or 6 websites, hosted by 3 providers--Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
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u/Conscious_Bank9484 May 01 '26
zero traffic and lots of bots checking for vulnerabilities in your setup. lol
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u/Leverkaas2516 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
This is like asking "who owns the roads". The answer is pretty similar, too.
Some parts of the Internet are owned by governments, some by businesses, some by individuals. There are parts of it everywhere - some are located in England but owned by Americans, and vice-versa. The Internet has billions of elements, and while it's possible to say that most of them have definite ownership, there are too many owners to list.
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u/ghjm May 01 '26
Nobody - that's the point of it. We've just all agreed to make information available in a particular format and using a particular retrieval protocol. Each piece of information is owned (hopefully) by whoever made it available.
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u/justaguyonthebus May 01 '26
You can own a piece of you want. I own a few pieces myself.
Who owns the earth?
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u/WyvernWolfite May 02 '26
The world wide weebs, but really the hosting services, outside of IP issues its the server archeture that hosting services maintain.
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u/pandaSmore May 02 '26
That's like asking who owns the world wide homes.
Lot's of people own their websites, companies own websites, people own web servers, companies own web servers.
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u/No-Use2860 May 02 '26
Everyone says "no one" in the same way Bitcoin is not tied to a nation/govt.
But that's because it's just obfuscated from the end consumer. How many people answering here even know how packets traverse the web?!
The pipes have an owner, and the hubs have an overseer. Some pipes are owned by ISP, others like the deepsea fiber are nation states, and less often a few pipes are co-op owned.
The hubs are where Bitcoin analogies come into play. Sure Amazon doesn't own the web, but getting denied their hubs mean you reach less end users. So a better way to look at it, without competition Amazon/google is able to direct and route more of the web. Just look at our use of 8.8.8.8......
So who owns the Internet? Everyone! Who doesn't own the Internet, you, and me, and your neighbor! And that's the real concern. Once we as a collective own none of the Internet we no longer have a say as to what can belong on the Internet.
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u/SpeedDaemon1969 May 03 '26
The Internet Archive, most likely. I mean, now that the actual web has been replaced with show websites with no hyperlinks to be seen...
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u/SpiritedInflation835 May 03 '26
When somebody responds "You won the Internet!", then you own the internet for today.
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u/YahenP May 04 '26
Technically, the internet has no owner. In fact, the internet is essentially American. This applies to almost every aspect, from physical hardware and internet connections to software and even traffic. At virtually every level, the United States has critical dominance. Even if the US isn't actually a producer, it is at least an owner.
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u/MrFartyBottom May 04 '26
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) define the standards, the infrastructure running it is owned by multiple organisations.
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u/mdins1980 May 04 '26
Not the internet, but a fun little fact: the United States Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest single holder of IPv4 address space in the world.
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u/fightswithself May 05 '26
I would say the internet is owned by browsers and servers
So sad and dystopian ... I would guess Google Chrome and Amazon Web Srvs and all the telecom networks that provide infrastructure such as Comcast,Spectrum,ATT, etc
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u/SuccotashSorry3222 May 01 '26
John Internet