There is, however, one other characteristic that does define the Web, and that is the humble hyperlink. Links are a feature of HTML, but they are not limited to HTML. Links are the connections that give the Web its name, and links are the biggest thing missing from native platforms. Some have pointed out to me that iOS and Android allow you to construct URLs that let users navigate between apps, but what they are navigating is not a network, but the tiny subset of the App Store they have installed on their devices. That is a far less powerful idea than the Web, where a single click is guaranteed (network willing) to take you to a self-contained application that begins running immediately.
So, my definition of the Web then is resources loaded over the Internet using HTTP and then displayed in a hyperlink-capable client. This definition is liberating. It helps me see a future beyond HTML which is still the Web. I can say now that when I exclaim my love for the Web, it's the freedom of driving the open Internet in a browser that I love, not the rendering technology. Hyperlink traversal matters. The Internet being global and decentralized matters. HTML does not matter.
