Open Web

The internet does not consist of a single, connected space. Part of it is accessible to everyone: you type in an address or click a link and the page opens. No account, no sign-up, no app is required. This freely accessible part is called the Open Web. The other part sits behind login screens and paywalls, or exists only within a specific app on your phone. Wikipedia, a blog, or a newspaper’s website belong to the open part. A chat history in a social network or a video that only runs inside an app does not.

Why the open web is under pressure

The open web has one important characteristic: anyone can participate. If you publish a page, you don’t need anyone’s permission to do so. There is no operator who decides whether your content is visible. This is what has made the internet what it is today. Search engines, price comparisons, and archives only work because content is openly accessible.

Over the past fifteen years, however, the focus has shifted. A large portion of time spent online today is spent within a handful of apps. These apps only display content within their own environment. Anyone who publishes there is dependent on the operator’s rules. If the platform changes its sorting, some content can lose its audience overnight.

On top of this comes an economic question. Many websites finance themselves through advertising displayed alongside their text. If users only see content as a summary generated by an AI, or within an app, no money flows back to the source anymore. This is exactly what publishers and technology companies are currently fighting over in court.

Links, standards, and crawlers

Technically, the open web rests on three building blocks. The first is the address, known as the URL. Every page has a unique address that can be copied and shared. The second is the link: from any page you can point to any other. This creates a web of connections rather than a collection of separate islands.

The third building block is open standards. These are shared rules for how a page is structured and how it is transmitted. Every browser understands these rules, regardless of the manufacturer. That’s why the same page works on a laptop, a phone, and in different programs.

On this foundation operate what are known as crawlers. These are programs that automatically follow links and collect pages. Search engines use them to build their index. AI companies use them to gather training data for their models. Websites can specify in a small text file called robots.txt which crawlers they do not want. However, this file is merely a polite request and is not technically enforceable.

The open web in current debates

In everyday life, you notice the difference with a simple test: can a piece of content be sent via link to someone who can then also view it? With a newspaper article or a Wikipedia entry, this usually works. With a post inside an app, it often fails due to the login requirement.

In business news, the term mainly comes up in two contexts. First, in lawsuits by publishers against AI providers who used texts for training without payment. Second, in antitrust proceedings, in which authorities examine whether individual corporations control access to the web too strongly.

A common misconception: open does not mean free of charge, nor does it mean free of rights. A freely accessible page can still be protected by copyright. Open initially only means that no one is technically prevented from accessing it. How this content may be reused is a separate question.