5 ms·
This made me kind of nostalgic of the pre-Facebook days. I liked that version of the internet…
by iampims 8y ago
This made me kind of nostalgic of the pre-Facebook days. I liked that version of the internet…
- baxtr 8y agoDon’t worry. I believe breaking the internet up back into small parts is a going to be a big trend in the coming years.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoBreaking the internet? No. Breaking huge near-monopolies into smaller companies - I'd love to see it happen, but it never will.
- vertexFarm 8y agoIt happened, but they conglomerated back together. And they captured all the regulatory bodies this time. We are going to have to get creative or settle in and prepare for an eternal reaming.
- s2g 8y agoyeah, they learned from Microsoft's mistakes. You have to pay the bribes.
- icebraining 8y agoI don't remember Microsoft being broken up.
- adventured 8y agoThey got lucky. Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered the company broken up. The Bush Administration is plausibly the only reason Microsoft remained one company. June 7th, 2000: "A federal judge today ordered Microsoft Corp. split into two companies, prescribing the biggest corporate breakup since AT&T while harshly rebuking the software giant for stifling computer-age competition. " http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000607/aponline170641_000.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000607/aponl... Then Microsoft and the DOJ made a deal on November 2nd 2001. Bush won the Presidency November 7th 2001. It's very likely the Clinton DOJ made a deal to ensure all of their hard work - indeed their victory - couldn't be easily reversed by the dramatically more business friendly Bush Administration if he were to win. http://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/ http://time.com/3553242/microsoft-monopoly/
- baxtr 8y agoThat’s what I meant, but I think it won’t happen through regulation but through new companies
- Retra 8y agoNew companies that will threaten established ones without being bought out by them?
- robotresearcher 8y agoYahoo has already broken itself into smaller companies. It was a giant* not so long ago. (*at the time, when the sector was much smaller)
- kakwa_ 8y agoIn truth they broke themselves into smaller companies due to the concurrence of an even bigger monopoly: Google. This was a bit of an accident really. Maybe one day big companies with monopolistic tendencies will be broken-up. But it will be a long and hard process. Look at the Standard Oil monopoly of the late XIXe/early XXe century, it took decades to break it up, even with laws against it. When the break-up will happen, I see two ways this could happen: * either break by activity (separate AWS and Amazon, Gmail, Youtube and Search in Google, etc) * break each service in a way to form a distributed system shared by several companies For example, split Google Search with part of the search index and engine distributed across several companies, and each companies having their own offer in term of UI design, data privacy, additional functionalities, plugged on this shared index.
- robotresearcher 8y agoGrandparent said "it will never happen". You and I agree that it will happen. We both presented examples.
- catach 8y agoI'm curious why you think that, since I don't see any mass-scale incentive pointing in that direction.
- zeth___ 8y agoI've started using hidden services a lot more recently. They remind me of the internet I remember from 1998-2006. I wouldn't say it's the 'old' internet, because I wasn't alive for the supposed glory days of arpanet, but it definitely has the sleazy, probably illegal, never say who I am irl vibe I remember and miss.
- mettamage 8y agoWhat kind of hidden services? You mean stuff like Tor?
- mantas 8y agoProbably talking more about obscure forums, blog and tiny webshops. Just like a decade+ ago.
- zeth___ 8y agoTor, freenet, i2p.
- realusername 8y agoFreenet definitively has a old-school feeling, I'm subscribed to their mailing list and I just wish the project wasn't plagued by a lot of internal fights.
- vertexFarm 8y agoI think a big part of it was that the internet still had a lot of artifacts from the pre-advertising model days. I think we're being blindsided by just how bad the side effects of the advertising model are for media. In general, not just for the internet. It's done unbelievable damage to our culture, but it's slow and indirect and difficult to predict or quantify. Like asbestos, tetraethyl lead, carbon dioxide, etc. Those are the technologies you have to watch out for. today we essentially define our culture and personal identities with advertising demographics and terminology. We've commoditized ourselves so thoroughly that any alternative is unimaginable and sounds silly to us.
- jonhendry18 8y agoPharma advertising is something which has probably had significant negative effects, at least on American society.
- stinkbug 8y agoLast in, first out. Let's get rid of the medical adverts first. There's nothing reasonable they can even possibly say in their defense.
- BoiledCabbage 8y agoThe advertising model is a disaster buy no-one has yet figured out how to replace it. Interests are very entrenched.
- fragmede 8y agoThe concept of paying for things online is what still sounds silly, despite the dominance of Netflix and Spotify. Can you imagine paying $.50 per Google search? How about a monthly fee to Facebook or Twitter? Reddit (pay by the subreddit)? HN? What still sounds silly, and has always sounded silly, is micropayments. But between its user base and Gold, Reddit is well situated to evolve the Internet just a bit further, and implement micropayments. Charge users an optional $5/month, and for users that do pay, take their upvotes and give money to recipients of upvotes from those users. They could also pay subreddit moderators, and of course Reddit itself from that, plus Stripe Connect makes the backend payments platform stuff easy.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoThat somehow made me think of the viagra ads as an indicator of a changing of eras. The viagra ads were a product of a time when the goal was to immediately and directly sell things. Now the era has shifted to one where the goal is to sell your information to people that want to sell you things (or otherwise use that information to further their ends). So instead of spamming you with viagra ads you're spammed with requests to divulge information at every turn you make. Register for this, register for that, give us your email address, let us access your location, let us send you an SMS (aka let us have your phone number), login with your facebook account, talk about yourself, and so much more. Think I preferred viagra spam.
- ThePadawan 8y agoPerhaps fitting then that the patent on Viagra is in the process of expiring: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viagra-to-go-generic-in-2017-according-to-pfizer-agreement/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/viagra-to-go-generic-in-2017-ac...