How Has the Monopoly of the Web Effected the Economy, Society & Industry?
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How has the Monopoly of the Web effected the economy, society & industry? BSc (Honours) Software Engineering by Connor Robert Boyd ST20062729 This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Cardiff Metropolitan University for the degree of BSc (Honours) Software Engineering. Cardiff School of Management April 2017 ii Declaration I hereby declare that this dissertation entitled “How has the Monopoly of the Web effected the economy, society & industry?” is entirely my own work, and it has never been submitted nor is it currently being submitted for any other degree. Candidate: Connor Robert Boyd Signature: Date: Supervisor: Dr Chaminda Hewage Signature: Date: iii Abstract Since Tim Berners-Lee famously launched the World Wide Web it has been a historical masterpiece. The main protagonist in the rise of Internet Monopolists like Google, Facebook and Amazon, and the fall of Blockbuster, HMV and Walmart. The dissertations focus is on Internet Monopolists like Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg who dominate the Web. An analysis of the development of the Web from Web 1.0 though to the latter stages of Web 2.0 and the future for the Web, Web 3.0, otherwise known as the Semantic Web. Studying at the work of Andrew Keen, James Slevin, Tim Wu and many other professionals, the dissertation justifies how the Web has positively and negatively affected key aspects of everyday life, addressing issues such as Employability, Security, Money, and Competition. I feel that in modern society, money is the motivator, without money there would be no dominance. Monopolist companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are leaders in the global market, dominating other companies in their respective Web sectors. Through the application of literature and personal research, a conclusion can be justified as to what sort of effect the Web has had on the economy, society and industry. Methods used in gathering data include quantitative questionnaires, and data gathered is used in seeking a clear answer to the question, ‘How has the Monopoly of the Web effected the economy, society & industry?’. It is hoped the dissertation will inform researchers and practitioners about the influence internet monopolists have on the economy, society and industry. iv Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation supervisor, Dr. Chaminda Hewage. Without his assistance and involvement in every step throughout the process, this dissertation would have never been accomplished. I would also like to thank the members of my family for continued support and motivation throughout the entire process, the time spent proof reading my work, their wise counsel and sympathetic ear. Also, I thank my girlfriend for constantly reminding me to not give up and understanding how busy my schedule has been. In addition, I would like to thank all participants of the questionnaire for their valuable opinions and input into the dissertation. v Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Monopoly 1 1.2 Now and the Future 2 1.3 We are the 99% 3 1.4 Expected Outcome 3 2 Literature Review 4 2.1 Aims & Objectives 4 2.2 Literature Analysis 4 2.3 Modern Day Internet 5 2.4 Topics of Discussion 6 2.4 Future Study 6 3 Methods 6 3.1 Sampling 9 4 The Problem 10 5 The Money 11 5.1 Competition 13 5.2 E-Commerce 14 5.3 Entertainment 14 5.4 The Search Engine 16 5.5 The Social Network 18 5.6 Employability 20 5.7 The Selfie 22 5.8 Security 23 5.9 Children 25 5.10 Dark Web 27 5.11 Propaganda 26 6 Results and Findings 28 6.1 What do you enjoy doing most online? 29 6.2 How often do you use the following? 30 6.3 Do you think that some people spend too much time on the Internet and does this top them form socialising? 30 6.4 Do you think that the Internet is safe for children? Why? 31 6.5 What are some security issues you must think about when you access the Internet? 31 6.6 Final Outcome 33 7 Conclusion 34 7.1 Importance of Research 35 8 Bibliography and References 37 9 Appendices 41 vi List of Tables Methods 6 Table 1: Strengths and Weakness of conducting a questionnaire 7 Table 2: Strengths and Weakness of conducting an interview 8 The Money 11 Table 3: Dominant Companies Annual Revenue vs their direct rivals 13 Results and Findings 28 Table 4: The sample of participants 28 vii List of Figures Introduction 1 Figure 1: Evolution of Facebook 2 The Money 11 Figure 2: Poke’s fall from grace 12 Figure 3: How popular personal assistants have become 16 Figure 4: Annual Google Searches 1999-2012 17 Figure 5: 2014 Search Engine Market Share 17 Figure 6: Comparison of Web 1.0 & Web 2.0 sites 19 Figure 7: Amount lost compared to age of scammed users 23 Figure 8: Example of fake Amazon email 24 Figure 9: Most purchased items on the Dark Web 26 Figure 10: Silk Road’s website 27 Results and Findings 28 Figure 11: What do you enjoy doing most online? 29 Figure 12: How often do you use the following? 30 viii ix Introduction The World Wide Web (WWW) launched in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, inspired by Ted Nelson and his idea of hypertext. In Nelsons hypertext system, there was no concept of deletion. Everything was remembered. Berners-Lee identified that the Internet and Hypertext had ‘come of age’. As he writes in his 1999 book, Weaving the Web, Berners-Lee noticed the gap in the Internet, leading to the birth of the World Wide Web. The Web’s architecture was made up of three elements, a computer language – HTML, a taxonomy for travelling between hypertext files – HTTP, and finally, an address code linked to the hypertext file used to call up any files on the web – URL. By using this architecture for the Web, Berners-Lee could radically simplify the internet. In November 1991, the first website, Info.cern.ch was launched. Over the last 25 years, the Web has been the Internet’s killer application, even more so than email. In his 1999 book John Naughton concludes “The internet is one of the greatest co-operative enterprises in the history of mankind” and with the creation of the Web the Internet has now achieved “liftoff”. Since the book was initially published in 1999, the Web has made waves worldwide, with over 1 billion websites now live. A massive increase since the first ever Website in 1991. Without Berners-Lee’s incredible radicalisation of the Internet by introducing a single application, there would be no Google, Amazon, Facebook or the billions of other websites people use on a daily basis. 1991 represents the birth of a new period of history, the Networked Computer Age. The Internet has created new wealth, new debates, new markets and most importantly a new economy. Without the internet, the “One Percent Economy” and Internet Monopolists like Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos would be nobodies working regular day-to-day jobs. Monopoly The Web is a competition. A competition on who can provide the best services for their users. It’s a dog eat dog economy. Most sectors of today are controlled by leading companies, like Facebook & Google. There is no better search engine than Google, and there hasn’t been since Yahoo was dethroned by Google as the best search engine in the mid 2000’s. Essentially, Google owns the search engine. Facebook dominates social media, owning WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus VR. eBay rules online auctions, running live real life auctions out of business. Apple dominates the mobile phone industry and online content delivery, albeit closely followed by Samsung and Android. Amazon controls retail through e-commerce and is the primary reason stores such as HMV, Woolworths and hundreds of bookstores have closed worldwide. All the companies that dominate the new Networked Computer Age, are all part of ‘Web 2.0’ – the internet’s second stage of development, through user generated content and the growth of social media. 1 “Facing decline, they do everything possible to stay in power. And that’s when the rest of us suffer.” - Tim Wu, Wall Street Journal, 2010 Specifically writing about Facebook, Tim Wu notes that even when they are out of favour in the social media market, Facebook will use their social media superpower and reputation to do everything to stay in power. Meaning up and coming social media platforms will suffer because of this. In 2015, Social Media photo sharing app Instagram was making headlines for all the right reasons - Facebook noticed this and bought the company for a tiny $1 Billion in cash and stock. It’s now 2017, and Instagram is estimated to be worth $36 Billion. Internet Monopolists like Facebook are buying the opposition, dominating their field and remaining the most popular platform. The intent of Wu’s article for Wall Street Journal is clear: Every user of these dominant monopolies suffers. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon are controlling the economy, eliminating any threat to their position as most dominant platform, and remaining as the dominant company in its sector. Now and the Future The first generation of internet sites, dubbed Web 1.0 by professionals, primarily gave information, connected by hyperlinks. Web 1.0 is generally believed to refer to static websites that were not yet providing interactive content. Web 1.0 sites were non-profit educational sites that contained information useful to users, without any incentive to revisit the website in the future.