A neat myth says the web was invented as a benevolent commons and then “commercialised” by accident. The reality is harsher and more interesting: Tim Berners-Lee built an open architecture, Marc Andreessen industrialised it, and the web’s openness made it capturable. Netscape’s dominance, the server wars, and the rise of platforms show how commons become power. For those nostalgic for a “purer” web, this essay argues that openness was never innocence, and that the commons was always destined to collide with capture. Today, the public web is a shop window; real life moved indoors. What comes next is worse: AI-mediated “engagement” with humans recruited as emotional middleware.