Happy birthday to us! The Movement for an Open Web is four years old today! On 18th September 2020 our founders, James Rosewell and Timothy Cowen, incorporated Movement for an Open Web Ltd to lead the fight against the enclosure of the Internet by the tech giants. We wanted to help in the battle against efforts by the platforms to degrade open standards in order to close down competition online.
Since then we’ve been pretty busy! We were the primary complainant behind the CMA’s investigation into Privacy Sandbox as well as the European Commission’s and the CMA’s Statements of Objection to Google. We’ve also been closely involved with the US Department of Justice on the ongoing Google AdTech trial and have been advocating for fairer and more balanced rule making at the W3C.
Those activities have made a real difference to the debate around the role of Google and Apple in digital markets. As well as the avalanche of regulation and litigation that Google now faces, the CMA’s intervention in Privacy Sandbox led to the delay and then rollback of Google’s cookie deprecation plans and the W3C is – slowly – reforming to counter the power of the monopolists in digital rule making. More importantly, the debate has now moved on from whether something should be done about the platforms to what should be done about the platforms.
But we’re not resting on our laurels. There is much to yet to do.
Firstly, we need to ensure that any remedies against Google go beyond headline-grabbing breakups to address the systemic issues that have allowed its dominance. That means defining new standards, reforming the standards-making process and addressing the power of browser owners. Then we need to look at creating a sensible and reasoned debate on privacy that benefits both consumer protection and competition. We want to help create a digital market that is fit for purpose for the next 20 or 50 years, not just a solution that punishes the most egregiously monopolistic acts in the short term.
We can’t do this alone. Our members continue to support our efforts but we need more organisations to come forward and play their part, in public or behind the scenes. We also want to work with other advocacy organisations that support our aims to ensure that there is a unified voice for change. If you want to support a fairer and more competitive internet, one that works for all consumers and business and not just the tech giants, please get in touch. The more supporters we have, the sooner and better we can get this important work done.