A lot fewer ads. A lot more paid services. Personal identification via the internet would be more streamlined - basically government backed digital is cards.

A lot fewer ads. A lot more paid services. Personal identification via the internet would be more streamlined - basically government backed digital is cards. Windows would rule - more or less. Usenet and IRC would be things. The big issue was not understanding the importance of ads. Or the impact. We imagined the web would oriented towards machines talking to machines. But machines don’t consume ads. So APIs are second class citizens. We also expected a lot more offshoring.