After 15 years, the World Wide Web Foundation is closing its doors

Last week, the World Wide Web Foundation announced in an open letter (PDF) that it would be “winding down” and “closing [its] virtual doors” after 15 years of working to make the web safer and more accessible.

The World Wide Web Foundation was founded in 2009 by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who’s widely credited as inventing the world wide web and making it possible for regular users like you and me to browse websites and download files over the internet.

When the WWWF was first created, only 20 percent of the world’s population had access to the internet. Today, that figure has ballooned to an astonishing 70 percent with no signs of stopping — and alongside that growth, ever more threats of scams, malware, and hackers.

In the open letter, Berners-Lee writes that while the internet of today continues to face new challenges, many excellent organizations have formed over the last decade-plus that are “defending the Web’s principles and users’ rights online.”

As such, Berners-Lee will be switching his attention away from the WWWF so he can further develop his vision for the Solid Protocol, which aims to bring us a more open and decentralized evolution of the web.

Further reading: The most secure web browsers