I thought x86 was on its way out in the 90s. It was, but amd64 gave it a new lease on life. We had search back in the 90s. Archie, Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, etc

I thought x86 was on its way out in the 90s. It was, but amd64 gave it a new lease on life. We had search back in the 90s. Archie, Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, etc. But Google brought better ... advertising. What did I expect? I expected hardware to get better. I didn't expect the phone to be so dominant. The iPhone 12 to someone from the 90s might as well be a Cray tricorder. Hardware is a LOT better now. Dunno if software is that different. JITs are crap; they re-invent the same thing over and over. Linux re-invents what VMS and other commercial operating systems have already done. Most progress has been either hardware or enabled by hardware.