According to writer Dave Barry, the Internet is actually run by a 13 year old named Jason. Barry also notes that online services are so anxious to sign you up they'll sneak into your house and do it while you're asleep.
Seriously, one forgotten factor in "control" is the way people _access_ the Internet. That is, who gets to set the standards for how browsers will work. There must be shared standards so our PCs can access web pages and the web designers know what stuff they can put out.
What troubles me is that web designers allow a lot of sneaky stuff that the average user doesn't know about. One of course is "cookies". I tried disabling cookies and virtually no site will work at that point without a lot of irritation.
Going deeper there are dangerous things like spyware and other functions that allow a website to take control of your computer in bad ways.
Why is there a provision for "pop-up" ads at all?
The real question is why do browser developers allow these things to work in the first place? Accessing a web site should be strictly "READ ONLY", with no executable commands that could access disk files or memory on the user's home machine. In other words, a browser should be able to read only the distant site only and not send anything back to it.
If it is really necessary for browers to have high horsepower, they should default to protective settings, and require a user to manually override them to run certain applications. Only those specific applications (such a company's in-house system) would have more power or machine authority.