Berners-Lee bigs up the 'semantic web'

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, recognised as the founding father of the world wide web, claims the work of companies like Google has made the web a much more powerful tool.

Speaking at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce in London, Berners-Lee said: "Initially there was a huge issue [with the web] that you couldn't find anything. Then of course the Google boys came along. And then of course it changed the web."

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He added: "The web is incredibly simple. [It] works as people like their stuff to be read. What the internet did was, people said links aren't important, it's the thing on the other end."

Berners-Lee also discussed how the 'semantic web' will form the next stage of the web's evolution - essentially allowing users to collect data together whether it's part of the world wide web or not.

He gave the example of combining online bank statements and photos with a desktop calendar, allowing people to work out what they were doing when they took a particular photo.

Summing up the development of the web, Berners-Lee said: "A small number of ideas have a disproportionate impact."

Berners-Lee proposed the world wide web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

The global project created a web of connections to information on the internet using hypertext documents. During the early 1990s Berners-Lee worked to develop the web, specifying the URL, HTTP and HTML standards.