Dead Web or Web Misread?

December 5, 2025

Journalists, Internet experts, and everyone with a bit of knowledge has declared the World Wide Web dead for thirty years. The term “World Wide Web” officially died with the new millennium, but what about the Internet itself? Ernie Smith at Tedium wrote about the demise of the Web: “The Sky Is Falling, The Web Is Dead.” Smith noticed that experts stated the Web is dead many times and he decided to investigate.

He turned to another expert: George Colony, the founder of Forrester Research. Forrester Research is a premier tech and business advisory firms in the world. Smith wrote this about Colony and his company:

“But there’s one area where the company—particularly Colony—gets it wrong. And it has to do with the World Wide Web, which Colony declared “dead” or dying on numerous occasions over a 30-year period. In each case, Colony was trying to make a bigger point about where online technology was going, without giving the Web enough credit for actually being able to get there.”

Smith strolls through instances of Colony declaring the Web is dead. The first was in 1995 followed by many other declarations of the dead Web. Smith made another smart observation:

“Can you see the underlying fault with his commentary? He basically assumed that Web technology would never improve and would be replaced with something else—when what actually happened is that the Web eventually integrated everything he wanted, plus more.

Which is funny, because Forrester’s main rival, International Data Corp., essentially said this right in the piece. ‘The web is the dirt road, the basic structure,’ IDC analyst Michael Sullivan-Trainor said. ‘The concept that you can kill the Web and start from square one is ridiculous. We are talking about using the Web, evolving it.’”

The Web and Internet evolve. Technology evolves. Smith has an optimistic view that is true about the Web: “I, for one, think the Web will do what it always does: Democratize knowledge.”

Whitney Grace, December 5, 2026

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Internet, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.