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> You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites. AOL already tried that back when the
by autoexec 7y ago
> You should have no doubt that, for example, Facebook would make a "the internet" which was 100% Facebook-operated sites.
AOL already tried that back when they were still sending floppies through the mail. They were the largest ISP on earth and couldn't keep people in their little walled off corner of the internet. I don't think anyone else is going to be more successful.
- taeric 7y agoThey were probably more successful than you'd like to acknowledge. And the modern companies do have a fair bit more power.
- umanwizard 7y agoThey might not have been able to keep people there forever, sure. But their walled garden was “the internet” to a major chunk of people in the US for quite a long time. Remember when TV commercials would tell you a company’s AOL keyword?
- kortilla 7y agoYeah, that was around the time the internet wasn’t even relevant to the majority of the first world population. Trying to make comparisons to how it might look today is pointless. At AOLs peak, it had about 35 million subscribers. Comcast alone has nearly that many.
- dehrmann 7y agoOr when people would tell you their ICANN domain?