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> I so badly wanted that future of the Internet, but somehow we ended up in a place where corporations ate it all. The high bandwidths we got today are exactly

> I so badly wanted that future of the Internet, but somehow we ended up in a place where corporations ate it all. The high bandwidths we got today are exactly the result of a full commercialization of the Internet. If there was no money to earn here, we would still be stuck with dial-up connections and had no YouTube and Netflix. I understand that advertisements and online tracking suck but it’s the result of consumers not willing to pay a penny for many online services. But I think that’s already changing with all those subscription models and SaaS businesses out there.

JohnMakin 2y ago
Blaming consumers for the state of things and for “not spending money” is a common refrain, and honestly is gaslighting and revisionist. The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now, which is to the point of total degradation of the core service itself - this is not the cause of consumers, but rather the current mindset of the wall street landscape. As far as “not willing to pay for it” what do you call subscription models of popular language models like chatGPT? I would pay an embarrassing amount for a google that worked like google did 10 years ago. That isn’t my fault that product doesn’t exist anymore, the demand is there. This angry tone isn’t directed at you, I just find it so frustrating that people believe it’s such a binary choice. Google had the literal monopoly on tech talent and knowledge for 20 years and decided to divert that into the most cannibalistic and predatory business model around. Can you imagine had they directed the same efforts to making an actual competitor to AWS? I am speaking as a career cloud infra guy and business owner running on cloud - as much as I hate MS products I’d sooner migrate to azure than ever spend a penny on a google cloud product for anything more critical than running the office coffee maker. That, I think, was a tremendously bad decision for the internet, and the decision absolutely was not binary. Make a good product people find useful and people pay for it. That’s how the market has worked for all of human history, there’s nothing different about the internet.
- G3rn0ti 2y ago
  > The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now What time period are you even talking about? In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. The internet only started growing exponentially with commercial services appearing in the late nineties. This was the time when people started to demand high speed Internet connections (ASDL) and were willing to pay for that. But this was not the case for its services. Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. IMHO it is your view on the Internet history that is being "revisionist" and "gaslighting". Take this from sb who had his private Internet access as early as 1998.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    > Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. The adtech of today is nowhere near as invasive or pervasive as it was then - this is an extremely dishonest or ignorant framing of what is happening in today's internet vs the one of yesterday. There are plenty examples of paid-for subscription services on the internet doing profitably without jamming adware/malware down your throat. Would you like examples?
  - jmwilson 2y ago
    > In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. Your timeline is off by at least half a decade, and things were changing very rapidly in that time. By the mid-'90s, NSFNET was formally dead, after years of accepting commercial traffic. Local ISPs for home users started popping up and AOL opened its access to USENET in 1993. The push for residential broadband also started almost immediately; @Home was offering residential cable internet in 1996, it was the future at the time, just not very evenly distributed. This was well before PCs had the processing power to do standard-definition video.
    - 2y ago
lomase 2y ago
I have paid maybe 10k in my lifetime to be connected to internet. That is why the telecom company has been able to invest in infra. I don't have good fiber thanks to Netflix.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Blaming consumers for the state of things and for “not spending money” is a common refrain, and honestly is gaslighting and revisionist. The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now, which is to the point of total degradation of the core service itself - this is not the cause of consumers, but rather the current mindset of the wall street landscape. As far as “not willing to pay for it” what do you call subscription models of popular language models like chatGPT? I would pay an embarrassing amount for a google that worked like google did 10 years ago. That isn’t my fault that product doesn’t exist anymore, the demand is there. This angry tone isn’t directed at you, I just find it so frustrating that people believe it’s such a binary choice. Google had the literal monopoly on tech talent and knowledge for 20 years and decided to divert that into the most cannibalistic and predatory business model around. Can you imagine had they directed the same efforts to making an actual competitor to AWS? I am speaking as a career cloud infra guy and business owner running on cloud - as much as I hate MS products I’d sooner migrate to azure than ever spend a penny on a google cloud product for anything more critical than running the office coffee maker. That, I think, was a tremendously bad decision for the internet, and the decision absolutely was not binary. Make a good product people find useful and people pay for it. That’s how the market has worked for all of human history, there’s nothing different about the internet.

G3rn0ti 2y ago
> The internet functioned fine for over a decade, profitably, without invasive adware like we see now What time period are you even talking about? In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. The internet only started growing exponentially with commercial services appearing in the late nineties. This was the time when people started to demand high speed Internet connections (ASDL) and were willing to pay for that. But this was not the case for its services. Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. IMHO it is your view on the Internet history that is being "revisionist" and "gaslighting". Take this from sb who had his private Internet access as early as 1998.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  > Google's primary business model way back in 2000 was already showing ads related to your search terms. Even back in 2003 Google introduced the free GMAIL service that showed ads based on your email content. That's 21 years ago. The adtech of today is nowhere near as invasive or pervasive as it was then - this is an extremely dishonest or ignorant framing of what is happening in today's internet vs the one of yesterday. There are plenty examples of paid-for subscription services on the internet doing profitably without jamming adware/malware down your throat. Would you like examples?
- jmwilson 2y ago
  > In the mid nineties the Internet was largely a research network between university computers and paid for by tax payers. Your timeline is off by at least half a decade, and things were changing very rapidly in that time. By the mid-'90s, NSFNET was formally dead, after years of accepting commercial traffic. Local ISPs for home users started popping up and AOL opened its access to USENET in 1993. The push for residential broadband also started almost immediately; @Home was offering residential cable internet in 1996, it was the future at the time, just not very evenly distributed. This was well before PCs had the processing power to do standard-definition video.
  - 2y ago

lomase 2y ago

I have paid maybe 10k in my lifetime to be connected to internet. That is why the telecom company has been able to invest in infra. I don't have good fiber thanks to Netflix.