The Web & The Web Browser

I wrote a little about distribution and gatekeepers a short while ago. Gatekeepers are generally owner-operators of closed digital platforms that have their own audiences and relationship to manage with that audience. They welcome third-party software developers to build for their platform because it increases the value of their platform overall. A similar situation plays out on many other kinds of digital platforms today with other kinds of content, such as text (e.g. X, BlueSky) and video (e.g. YouTube, TikTok).

There are a number of challenges with having a mediator between a business and their (potential) customers. For one, when transactions are facilitated by a platform there is often a revenue-split between the platform and the business. Another is that the platform generally establishes a code of conduct, which shapes how a business is able to talk to customers through the platform, and what information they're allowed to communicate. It is entirely possible that the way that the manner in which a business or its intellectual property or individual products have differentiated themselves in a digital marketplace render them "homeless" in digital space where the revenue-share with a platform makes operations unviable or platform policies would not allow the digital content.

So for a number of reasons, businesses have an interest in reaching customers through other means. For years the web has largely filled this role as an open platform made possible by the public internet. If you have information you want to share with the world, you only need to find a company with the infrastructure prepared to host it. These hosting providers are not as hands-on as gatekeepers, their role in practice is typically restricted to ensuring delivery. The problem creators face today is that it is difficult to reach an audience. Where once people may have actively searched for content, today they are lured to contemporary digital fiefs (such as the platforms I referred to earlier).

When consumers visits a website for the first time using a web browser, they request data from a server. Assuming that the connection on the device is healthy and the website is available, the required data to facilitate the Realised Product (see Subjective Software) is delivered on-demand. It is worth noting that this is in stark contrast to how 'apps' are facilitated on other platforms, a story for another time. This on-demand delivery is a consequential feature of the web as a platform. The specific problem of a family of versions being operated at scale for the general public to use for a potentially significant period of time is a non-issue on the web today.

Web technologies share certain common primitives. HTML, CSS, the Document Object Model, JavaScript and so on. Despite this, there are still technology choices to be made and there is still notable differentiation among digital factories that operate through the web. There is also an additional layer of abstraction compared to delivery on other platforms - the web browser. The web browser is in some ways like any other app running on a device, it is unlike many other apps in that it serves as a host to third-party digital experiences. Similar to the web host for serving content, this web browser is another mediator between a business and its users that is relatively hands-off.

Ideally every web browser - and there is a market for them, Microsoft was almost broken into seperate companies over this in the year 2000 - would adhere to formalised standards and where these standards do not yet exist they would behave in the same way and the Realised Product would be identical irrespective of whether you are using Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or some other web browser. For some kinds of web experiences this ideal is satisfied, but it is unsatisfied often enough that some digital experiences on the web explicitly communicate to their users that they only support select web browsers.

One of the key differentiators between the web and other software platforms is that its limitations (i.e. its reliance on the internet) and even some primitives (e.g. a hyperlink or URL) are familiar to many in contemporary society. The experience of using a web browser is also commoditised enough and exposed to people often enough and over a long enough timescale that many people are able to understand what is happening even when they are looking at a blank white screen - that it is not necessarily a reflection of a particular Realised Product.

Until next time.