A big development will likely be the way you access information not by browsing a web page or through a mobile application but by asking your personal assistant. Take something like the Amazon Echo and fast forward 10-20 years. Will the Echo be the equivalent to a reasonably competent PA in that time? If it is, then that is bound to have a profound effect on people's use of the Internet and the web. If I ask Echo to buy me something, will I be at all interested from whom my AI has purchased it? I doubt it. The semantic web for all of those things is going to have to get very sophisticated so that my PA can interrogate them as necessary. A lot of this stuff is already here. Siri being an obvious example. But, they are going to get better in Moore Law time. They are going to get very useful, very quickly.

@Jack_Hughes - agreed. I use Google Home, slightly modified, to turn on/off many things in my music studio. Combined with Bluetooth & Chrome Stick, I can (but usually don't) search & surf the web, type emails, watch movies, listen to music... all by voice commands.

i'm still waiting for the semantic web described by its inventor when i read "Weaving the Web" probably 17 years ago.
Berners-Lee: Weaving the Web:
https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Weaving/Overview.html [w3.org]

@phranque - wait no more, it is already here. Google picks up price information from my product pages using semantic info embedded inside the page. Same for an awful lot of other info including about me and my biz partner.

When you consider who provided G's seed funding, one wonders if the future web could become militarized...if it's not so already.

The answer is not about where it goes, but how you will adapt about it.

henry0 - yes, if we want to stay relevant, we must keep up. The internet is not the place for anyone not willing to adapt to change. The internet is constant change.

With growing infrastructure deficiencies, IP6 could become a hobbling force....I wonder if the huge proliferation in IP addressable devices may someday slow bandwidth down to a crawl or open the door for huge DDoS attacks from 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 smart IP enabled devices in every imaginable appliance, phone, car and eventually smart dust. We may need many multiple backbone layers or much larger fiber pipes. I may be wrong. Any network engineers care to weigh in?

IPv6 has nothing to do with infrastructure nor bandwidth. IPv6 simple allows for continued assignment of Internet Protocol (IP) enabling more headroom for future devices.

IPv6 also addresses the ever-expanding use of mobile devices. Device mobility, security, and configuration aspects have been considered in the design of the protocol making it more efficient.

IPv6 also permits hierarchical address allocation methods that facilitate route aggregation, again more efficient. The use of multicast addressing is expanded and simplified, and provides additional optimization for the delivery of services.

Recent news (with speech and sites being shut down by not only ISPs, but Registrars and Search Engines) suggests the net is heading into new territory where content will be judged and banned by non-regulated corporations. IPv6 and infrastructure might not make much different in that world.

On topic: Where is the Internet Headed? (but freely admit this look into the future would perhaps serve better in a separate thread, and still not be that toothsome.)

On the revenue side aka ads we are already seeing change. There have always been a few, relatively speaking, selling ad space directly; there have also always been some producing 'native' ads; and the two have been increasingly cross pollinating. But the real driver for ad change began with the 'impressions' scandal and increasing ad fraud and the spread of ad blocking: on the one side advertisers are frustrated, on the other viewers are irritated. I see several possibilities developing to replace the current typical third party ad network:
1. Large sites, media enterprises see the value added of reinventing ad departments and selling direct.

2. Ad agencies have amalgamated so much, some so large that they could viably set up their own ad networks.

3. SME sites in same or similar niches/industries could set up cooperative marketing agencies and sell ad/af space directly.

Each of the above exists here and there. One or all may find the right time to bypass the middleman behemoths. Of course, if this happens the ease and simplicity that allowed pretty much anyone to jump on the web ad bandwagon would be lessened or gone.

One final possibility/variation is that inline third party code calls are replaced with APIs serving from publishers' servers. This would require far more quality control aka more human oversight and less algo input so I see it as either a last ditch stand perhaps too late by G or a replacement play by a G competitor.

Regardless, ad delivery too will be a-changing.

IPv6 has nothing to do with infrastructure nor bandwidth.

I think you missed my point. It does if you consider the astronomical number of possible addressable devices it will allow in the future.
So you are saying that having up to 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 devices all chattering away simultaneously has no effect on bandwdith?

@samwest - I understood your assumption that the more registered devices would be associated with bandwidth availability, and it's just not so... but I probably should have been more explicit by saying "IPv6 has nothing *directly* to do with infrastructure nor bandwidth.

Of course routing & server hardware needs (and is) to keep up with the increasing demand that will continue.

Also, as I mentioned above, IPv6 is much more capable in execution:

IPv6 also addresses the ever-expanding use of mobile devices. Device mobility, security, and configuration aspects have been considered in the design of the protocol making it more efficient.

IPv6 also permits hierarchical address allocation methods that facilitate route aggregation, again more efficient. The use of multicast addressing is expanded and simplified, and provides additional optimization for the delivery of services.

Because of these improvements, and other upgrades like HTTP/2 and the new WiFi Standard, the increasing number of registered devices should have little impact, at least in the foreseeable future... but we shall see :)

Where do you think the internet will be in the next 5 years? 10 years? Beyond?

Short answer? ... It's going to end up back in the box it came in.
Apps and Clouds are just new words to describe the age old main frame.
No one will own software and HDD's will become a thing of the past.
All we'll end up having is a simple and light UI that will do all of the talking to the mother ship off in some distant data center somewhere. Phones are doing it now, and it won't be long before your PC and Laptop will be doing it too. We won't own our own data directly anymore either. It will all be shipped off to the cloud.
Soon, we'll be unable to shift operating systems on-the-fly - We'll be stuck with borked firmware that will dictate what you'll use and how you'll use it. (Microsoft is doing this now)
Each network will be it's own little universe unto itself - a walled garden if you will.

No rage against the machine here at all - Simply stating the current direction that the net is moving toward.

Because of these improvements,

This makes a major assumption that adequate upgrades will even take place. Funny that Google Plus went down last night triggering broken links alerts from multiple WordPress sites. Traffic today seems to turn ON and OFF. May be related, maybe not. Just a possibility in the future web that you can't assume will be updated across the globe to support the current infrastructure. I tend to agree with mcneely's previous comment that it will all be centralized into huge cloud based data centers owned by a monopoly. However, this is just gazing into a foggy crystal ball. Nobody knows for sure.

I think we need to look at the building blocks of the internet and think what will need to change and what is out dated. The world wide web is not the internet, it is part of it and it is the part most people use. Surfing the web checking email etc. Those all use protocols that are part of the "world wide web". The actual internet is much more than the WWW and I think the web will need to evolve a lot to match now users are consuming it.

I see three main areas developing. Internet of things, social and information.

The internet of things is already here and will continue to grow. It can be anything from a toaster you can trigger via your smart phone to a fridge/freezer that orders your groceries online.

Social is an interesting space. People tend to use apps as opposed to a web browser. Whilst this is easier and much stickier for the content provider or service owner, it is extremely limiting.

Information is where a Browser will still be required. When you want to look out with the content within proprietary apps.

The younger generation tends to spend very little time actually surfing websites. They go on facebook and get their social fix there. The only time they tend to leave is when they find something enticing enough to make them click.

I predict that future versions of the Facebook App will have a web browser of sorts that will allow them to visit content sources away from FB whilst still retaining the conventional app controls allowing them to return to the "safety" of Facebook with a click.

Mack.

@mack, a few, rather unordered, thoughts on that

1. Checking mail is only WWW if you are using webmail.
2. APIs for apps, IoT, various types of bots, use HTTP but not HTML, and work outside web browsers, which blurs the line between web and other services. What defines the web now?
3. IoT security is going to be a continuing problem for a long time. For one thing, I do not think the manufacturers interests are aligned with the users here.

Yea the IoT is going to be a headache unless developers are able to issue firmware updates safely. One major issue I see right now is pretty much anyone can get involved creating such devices using nothing more than a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. It's great to be able to create, but security really is non-existent.

I watched a video recently on DIY home automation. It's scary how little thought was put into that.

Mack.

RE: IoT

Going forward, I think the ISPs will need to play a more hands-on role with all these devices connecting to their networks, similar to what Google & Apple do with their Apps.