If you\u2019ve been feeling like a handful of technology giants have a disconcerting influence over your online life, Nick Nguyen, Vice President of Firefox Product, gets you. As Nguyen (pronounced \u201cwin\u201d) sees it, browsing the internet is like driving a car. You can zip around where you like, make some turns, idle in neutral a bit, and throw it into reverse. You have the freedom to choose any route, which might lead to new places, like that tiny noodle restaurant a block from your favorite grocery store, tucked down an alley you happened through one day. On the web, you can stumble across new finds any which way you turn. Or so you\u2019re led to believe. It turns out, the web is not the open road many of us imagine \u2014 it\u2019s full of private lanes, cul-de-sacs, toll roads and sneaky detours designed to divert traffic where tech giants guide it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that really concerns me about the web right now is that it is shaped by a lot of decisions around optimizations for clicks and revenue,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cYou’re basically on very tightly managed tracks on the internet, and you have this illusion of freedom that you don’t actually have.\u201d<\/p>\n
While more people are online than ever before and more than a billion web pages live a click away, actual browsing activity is concentrated on a handful of sites with Google, Facebook and Amazon \u2014 and the sites and services they own and operate \u2014 influencing more than 70% of the traffic flow<\/a>. Big, established players now hold the market power shift and direct an incredible portion of web traffic their way, making it difficult for smaller entities and up-and-comers to remain independent of their services. In that consolidation of power, Nguyen also sees an opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you think about who’s building browsers, everyone else is actually in the business of monetizing the traffic\u2019s tracks\u201d he said. \u201cAs a browser backed by a non-profit company, Firefox<\/a> can give you a more useful web that’s more fun and more discoverable.\u201d<\/p>\n