What’s the state of the www by country? Tomorrow, we should know

Or at least we’ll know how it is in 86 countries, including Haiti, Mozambique, Myanmar, Ukraine and Sierra Leone. The Web Index launches tomorrow (December 11), the third year there’s a country-wise grading of the World Wide Web’s contribution to social, economic and political progress.

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, founded the World Wide Web Foundation in 2012 to assess progress and patterns of growth and development of www. As the Geneva-headquartered Foundation’s website puts it, it wants the “open Web” to be “a global public good and a basic right, ensuring that everyone can access and use it freely.”

The 2014 Web Index will examine the extent to which all of us with internet connections are equal. What’s the state of privacy, censorship, gender-based violence online, equality and Net Neutrality?

The last is something that German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t really agree with. Recently, she spoke in favor of distinguishing “between the free internet and the one for special services”. She wants to take up the issue with Brussels but the European Parliament supported the principle of net neutrality in an April vote.