a covenant for browsers, search, and people

The Web is slow-motion collapsing for multiple reasons, but at the heart of it all is a little known system: the Search/Browser Levy. Initially designed to fund browsers by taxing search engine revenue, the levy system is indeed succeeding in putting high-quality browsers in the hands of billions free of charge, but at a steep cost. As a direct result of its organisation, the levy makes browsers enforce an artifical search monopoly for Google that in turn enshittifies search and creates a monoculture that disorganises our shared information space. This leads to a heavily distorted market in digital advertising that massively increases the funds going to search ads — including browsers’ cut of that revenue — and correspondingly defunds the rest of the Web, notably news media.

There’s still time to act. The Web we built is a collective system without collective action, a shared environment that dreams of being a commons but lacks the shared governance to achieve that. We need not eliminate the levy system — rather, we can reform it so that it works for the web and those who use it.