Father of the Web says tech giants Facebook and Google may have to be split because they are becoming more powerful than 'most sovereign states'

Tim Berners-Lee says he is disappointed with the current state of the internet
Big tech firms like Facebook and Google have too much power, he claimed
He criticised the recent spate of data scandals perpetrated by tech giants

Published: 01:03 EDT, 1 November 2018 | Updated: 08:59 EDT, 1 November 2018

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Technology giants such as Facebook and Google have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up, the inventor of the World Wide Web has said.

Tim Berners-Lee, a London-born computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said he was disappointed with the current state of the internet following scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media to spread hate.

Silicon Valley tech firms may need to be split unless challengers or changes in taste reduce their clout, he said.

The digital revolution has spawned a handful of U.S.-based technology companies since the 1990s that now have a combined financial and cultural power greater than most sovereign states.

Tim Berners-Lee (file photo) says tech giants such as Facebook and Google have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up, unless challengers or changes in taste reduce their clout

'What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up,' Berners-Lee, 63, said in an interview. 'There is a danger of concentration.'

But he urged caution too, saying the speed of innovation in both technology and tastes could ultimately cut some of the biggest technology companies down to size.

'Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else,' Berners-Lee said.

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook have a combined market capitalisation of $3.7 trillion, equal to Germany's gross domestic product last year.

Berners-Lee came up with the idea for what he initially called 'Mesh' while working at Europe's physics research centre CERN, calling it the World Wide Web in 1990.

When asked who had the biggest intellectual influence on him, he said: 'Mum and Dad.'

Berners-Lee, a London-born computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said he was disappointed with the current state of the internet, following scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media sites like Facebook to spread hate (stock image)

'They were building computers, so I grew up living in a world where everything was mathematics and the excitement of being able to programme something was very fresh,' he said.

There was, he said, no 'Eureka' moment.

Instead, it was hard work, the experience of working in computer science and an attempt to overcome the frustrations of trying to share information with colleagues and students.

'Eureka moments are complete nonsense. I don't even believe the one about Archimedes. He had been thinking about it for a long time,' he said.

HOW DID TIM BERNERS-LEE CREATE THE INTERNET?

The World Wide Web was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist born on June 8, 1955.

Having studied physics at Queen's College Oxford, graduating in 1976, he started as an engineer in the telecommunications and microprocessor software industry.

In 1980, while working as an independent contractor at CERN, Berners-Lee described the concept of a global system based on using hypertext to share information between researchers.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote (pictured) the blueprint for what would become the World Wide Web, and said he is alarmed at what has happened to it in the last year

He built a prototype system called Enquire, which formed the conceptual basis for the World Wide Web.

In 1989 he published his landmark paper, 'Information Management: A Proposal', built the first WWW server and web browser 'WorldWideWeb.app'.

In 1994, he founded the World Wide Web Consortium, the main international standards organisation for the internet.

Now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford, Berners-Lee expressed dismay at the way consultancy Cambridge Analytica obtained the personal data of 87 million Facebook users from a researcher.

That scandal, he said, was a tipping point for many.

'I am disappointed with the current state of the Web,' he said. 'We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked.'

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and pledged to do more to protect users' data.

But social media, Berners-Lee said, was still being used to propagate hate.

'If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: 'Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?'' (Editing by Mark Potter)

FACEBOOK'S PRIVACY DISASTERS

Facebook in late September disclosed that it had been hit by its worst ever data breach, affecting 50 million users - including those of Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Attackers exploited the site's 'View As' feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other users.

The unknown attackers took advantage of a feature in the code called 'Access Tokens,' to take over people's accounts, potentially giving hackers access to private messages, photos and posts - although Facebook said there was no evidence that had been done.

The hackers also tried to harvest people's private information, including name, sex and hometown, from Facebook's systems.

Facebook said it doesn't yet know if information from the affected accounts has been misused or accessed, and is working with the FBI to conduct further investigations.

However, Mark Zuckerberg assured users that passwords and credit card information was not accessed.

Facebook says it has found no evidence 'so far' that hackers broke into third-party apps after a data breach exposed 50 million users (stock image)

As a result of the breach, the firm logged roughly 90 million people out of their accounts earlier today as a security measure.

Facebook made headlines earlier this year after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy.

The disclosure has prompted government inquiries into the company's privacy practices across the world, and fueled a '#deleteFacebook' movement among consumers.

Communications firm Cambridge Analytica had offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.

The company boasts it can 'find your voters and move them to action' through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists.

'Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,' with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website.

The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends.

The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump

This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so.

This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box.

The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.

This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK.

It has also suffered several previous issues.

2013, Facebook disclosed a software flaw that exposed 6 million users' phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers for a year, while a technical glitch in 2008 revealed confidential birth-dates on 80 million Facebook users' profiles.