Everyone wants to be the first to proclaim “The End of the Web.”  A quick Google search on the phrase turns up no less than one billion results. Yes, that’s Billion with a B.

Amazingly, I even saw an article from as early as the year 2000 proclaiming as much, though in a much different context. Today, doomsayers are pointing to the rise of mobile, the rise of the semantic web, the rise of Facebook, and now the rise of the App-centric approach to the Internet as signs of the impending fall.

Venture Capitalist Roger MacNamee rather boldly proclaimed that “right now, Apple is just killing the World Wide Web” in an article in MacWorld UK, reprinted here in CFO World.com. His premise is that with the number of iPhones and iPads in the market, Apple will dominate the next 10 year cycle of technology for the industry, and Google by comparison is stagnating.  

I would add, however, that the copy-cat approach to Apps taken by the Android platform suggests it’s the App-centric view that is having a substantial impact, Apple just happens to be the one who is driving it.  (Although SalesForce might want to lay claim at least to the concept with their Force platform, though in a different context) So if you add the Android App approach together with the iOS approach and the picture becomes even more complete. But let’s not forget that Google is the company behind the Android platform.

In 2010 Android and iOS devices accounted for 113M devices worldwide, a solid third of the total market. If you consider the total number of devices active in the market today and the number quickly becomes staggering. Apple alone has sold 100M units.

The argument that Apple is killing the world wide, and by extension Google, makes a good headline, but may not be entirely accurate. But the role of the “traditional web” is definitely up for debate.

It’s far more likely that our understanding of what the web means changes to allow room for the different modes of connection that are available today. Consider that the original base premise of the "web" was loosely a series of interconnected nodes that allowed for information to be broken into packets and  transmitted freely from one point to another. And where each packet can be distributed independently of each other. 

In the 60s, the idea was to make sure government communications could continue even if say, a small city was wiped out by a Soviet nuclear weapon. Today, the idea is to be sure that your 16 year old can fire up her iPad to watch the latest Justin Bieber video that a friend posted to Facebook.

I am pretty sure that the team at DARPA didn’t have THAT in mind when they conceived of the ARPANET. What will we think of next?