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Interesting article that's somewhat ruined by a click-baity title that it can't support. I first got on the web in 1994. There was far more difference between 1

Interesting article that's somewhat ruined by a click-baity title that it can't support. I first got on the web in 1994. There was far more difference between 1994 and 2014 than from 2014 to 2017. And that's the crux of it: just because it's different doesn't mean it's dying.

mojuba 7y ago
The difference between 1994 and 2014 seems more quantitative though. Here we are talking about the ownership of the referral traffic and how those companies who own it try to benefit from it. Nothing that happened between 1994 and 2014 comes close to it in terms of the impact on how people see the Internet and by extension how they see the world today.
- Cougher 7y ago
  I agree with most of what you're saying, but disagreeing with this part of it. The change between 1994 and 2014 is the difference between the internet growing to global dominance in everything from social connections to . . . well, is there anything about our lives that hasn't rested somehow on our usage of the internet since well before 2014? It seems to me that the internet of MSDOS 3.10based computers and dial-up modems to online shopping and the creation of billionaires is more different than what's changed from 2014-2017.
  - mojuba 7y ago
    It is true that online shopping and online ads alone have created a whole new industry in a very business sense of the word. The change happened some time towards the end of the 1990s. However, imagine you discover a new continent with vast resources and invite everyone to share the land and start producing and trading. When all land grabbing is done you begin to notice the rise of some powerful players who buy out or simply squeeze out smaller land owners. At one point your whole continent and the traffic within it becomes either directly owned or dependent on these giants to such an extent that you simply die if you don't play by their rules. Your continent now more looks like a conglomerate controlled by only a few powerful corporations rather than a free republic. And we can't even be sure they didn't make arrangements between them behind the scenes. So it's the ownership that's different now, which is nothing new really, we all kind of know about it.

mojuba 7y ago

The difference between 1994 and 2014 seems more quantitative though. Here we are talking about the ownership of the referral traffic and how those companies who own it try to benefit from it. Nothing that happened between 1994 and 2014 comes close to it in terms of the impact on how people see the Internet and by extension how they see the world today.

Cougher 7y ago
I agree with most of what you're saying, but disagreeing with this part of it. The change between 1994 and 2014 is the difference between the internet growing to global dominance in everything from social connections to . . . well, is there anything about our lives that hasn't rested somehow on our usage of the internet since well before 2014? It seems to me that the internet of MSDOS 3.10based computers and dial-up modems to online shopping and the creation of billionaires is more different than what's changed from 2014-2017.
- mojuba 7y ago
  It is true that online shopping and online ads alone have created a whole new industry in a very business sense of the word. The change happened some time towards the end of the 1990s. However, imagine you discover a new continent with vast resources and invite everyone to share the land and start producing and trading. When all land grabbing is done you begin to notice the rise of some powerful players who buy out or simply squeeze out smaller land owners. At one point your whole continent and the traffic within it becomes either directly owned or dependent on these giants to such an extent that you simply die if you don't play by their rules. Your continent now more looks like a conglomerate controlled by only a few powerful corporations rather than a free republic. And we can't even be sure they didn't make arrangements between them behind the scenes. So it's the ownership that's different now, which is nothing new really, we all kind of know about it.