Introduction

This book initiates a transformation of the Web into a self-managing, autonomous information system to challenge today’s all-embracing role of big search engines as centralized information managers. In the last decades, the World Wide Web became the biggest source for all kinds of information needed. After a short review of the state of the art, a Web-based system is presented for the first time, which employs all its instances equally to provide, consume, and process information uniformly and consistently.

System Functionalities

In order to build such an efficient, decentralized, and fully integrated information space with all its needed functionalities, a set of diverse algorithms is introduced. These novel mechanisms for load balancing, routing, clustering, document classification, but also time-dependent information management pertain to almost all system levels.

Decentralized Web Search

Finally, three different approaches to decentralized Web search are discussed that represent the backbone of the new autonomous Web.