Back in the day having fixed up front costs was considered a benefit and the "as a service" model was called rent seeking. But even then you could buy shared h

Back in the day having fixed up front costs was considered a benefit and the "as a service" model was called rent seeking. But even then you could buy shared hosting just as simply as you can sign up for "serverless" services. Some ISP's would even give you shared hosting as part of your internet connection. In many universities you could drop a script in your home directory and it was instantly available to the world. Even further back owning and hosting your own server was a dream almost no one could afford. People had to upload their serverless code to time sharing systems.