[Tichy]

Facebook dominating the web is a horror scenario.What good could you see about it? Do you want to pay a Facebook tax for every online innovation you can come up with? Do you want to be at their mercy for the survival of your business?

My only hope is that in the long run freedom of innovation will always be stronger than a walled garden like Facebook.

I thought Berners-Lee invented the web - how can he get too much credit for that? Hypertext as an idea existed before that, I think, but he did it.

[LostInTheWoods2]

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube, etc. These services thrive because they fill one or more holes that exist in the protocol space of the web. Eventually, these services should just be made into standard web protocols.

What is truly disturbing is the slow pace at which new protocols are folded into the web. Perhaps that is a problem that should be addressed. Until then, we will keep seeing all these services being built on top of the existing web structure instead of as an extension to it.

It would be nice to see one day, a web infrastructure that is as well managed and patched as Linux is.

[stanleydrew]

I don't understand what you're getting at. Why do new "protocols" need to be folded into the web?

The web can't ever be as well-managed and patched as Linux is. The web doesn't have a pre-defined scope. It's more like a transport layer for content and other services. And I'd like to see it stay that way; companies will compete and innovate way faster than any small standards committee or group of maintainers will.

[zandorg]

I know Ted Nelson personally. He invented the word hypertext. I'd say inventing that word proves him the father of hypertext, though Tim was the midwife.

[Tichy]

Sorry, but inventing the word really isn't good enough. I think the concept might actually predate the web for a couple of decades (too lazy to check Wikipedia right now). I seem to remember seeing an article on HN about a guy who invented it all long before there were even computers.

Also, maybe Tim found the right mix of ingredients. No idea, but perhaps early hypertext concepts did not include distributed documents, for example?

[zipdog]

There was an idea called the Memex in 1946 that was an inspiration for subsequent hypertext ideas. And a Belgian in the 1920s had a "steampunk" web, but it built more on the idea of inter-text referencing (like most encyclopedias use). Ted Nelson justifiably gets the credit for the term. There were a couple of distributed document with hyper-linkage ideas floating around in 1989 and 1990, so possibly Tim was just the one to put enough of it together and it would have happened within a year or two anyway, but there are certain aspects to his particular putting-it-together (the ease of writing HTML for display and content for example) that were important to the web becoming what it did, and possibly might not have happened at all without his push.

[giardini]

It's just a bloody pointer - give credit to someone who truly deserves it - the fellow who invented pronouns!

[mattmanser]

Most business now have to pay a Google tax in one way or the other, whether it be adwords, content building, link building or paying for SEO.

That's just the cost of entering a particular marketplace.

Think of it as rent.

[pyre]

Paying for SEO isn't a 'Google tax.' It's marketing. That's like saying that when you start a business you have to pay the 'Yellowpages tax.'

[Tichy]

Still, Google can't prevent you from running an internet business. I have heard some cases of companies prevailing without Google's approval.

Most businesses need to pay for marketing, of course running businesses is not free.

[swombat]

Moreover, rent to be paid to those who actually built the building.

If Facebook adds as much value to the web as Google did with their search engine, then they more than deserve getting "rent".