The spread of false or misleading information on the internet could damage its usefulness as an information tool, according to worldwide web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Content, rather than infrastructure, will be a major hurdle for the development and use of the web, said Berners-Lee speaking at the Innovation Edge Conference in London last week. “The web works fine, but the society you get on it can be one that you like or one that you don’t,” he said.

He cited medical information provided by pharmaceutical companies which produce promotional sites masquerading as an impartial source of advice.
This trend could follow the pattern shown by the rise of email spam, said Berners-Lee.

“Email worked well for a long time when there were not a lot of consumers or businesses online ­ then when acceptable use allowed people to send commercial mails it reached a tipping point, and for a lot of people it became unusable,” he said.

A change in the credibility of the internet could have serious implications for any individual or business with an online presence. The fight for high ranking on search engine results could become a major battleground, said David Viney, director of optimisation firm SEO Expert Services.

“Seven or eight years ago, the internet was essentially an academic tool for research and information,” he said. “Increasingly, commercialism becomes a real issue. “Search engines are reliable, so you tend to get authoritative results. There could come a point where the marketing dollar rigs the election so that the nature of Google’s results has changed markedly.”

Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, said: “Google works hard to preserve the quality of our index and the quality of our search results has increased steadily over the years. Keeping spam out of our search results continues to be a priority for us, but we are optimistic about our ability to do so.”

Use of information-gathering tools such as Phorm also raises issues, said Andy Kellett, senior analyst at Butler Group.

“It is too early to tell how much damage these tools could do, but history tells us that there is massive potential to create a whole new generation of spam,” he said.