The Anti-Web Movement Is Gathering Pace

It's created billions in sales, gave media companies their first taste of the Internet, encouraged self-expression where there was oppression and caused an explosion in publisher plurality. But, after 15 years as the net's publishing platform of choice, a movement is growing that wants to put the web back in its box.

Blame the "app". With little prior culture of mobile web consumption, publishers have barely given their HTML efforts five minutes in the sun before preferring to code snazzy, custom, closed interfaces instead in the likes of Xcode and Objective-C, in iPhone's case. After the desktop OS and browser wars of the late 90s settled down in to uniform web standards, many of us had thought the web, which runs through my veins, would become the mobile platform of choice in the same way. But, the rise of the revenue-making app store sales channel has coincided with publishers' realization that, if there are precious few ways of monetizing content on the desktop web, then little would be different on the handset or tablet flavor. Many publishers now seem frustrated with the lack of profit and the loss of character that comes with formulaic, template-driven pages. It's the first big challenge to the web orthodoxy we have enjoyed for nearly two decades.