3 ms·

"where you were billed per minute by the ISP, the platform, and maybe the thing hosted by the platform as well." And don't forget the phone companies. The idea

"where you were billed per minute by the ISP, the platform, and maybe the thing hosted by the platform as well." And don't forget the phone companies. The idea of unlimited all-you-can-eat on a POTS line wasn't implemented everywhere, and it only made sense when you were on for thousands of minutes a month. On top of that not every town had a local portal to Source, Telenet, Compu-Serve, etc so it was a crazy-expensive toll call to get connected in the first place.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
“corporations trying to make absolutely insane profits off everything that you did, where you were billed per minute by the minute” At least in the case of The Source, it looks like they were leasing time from another company’s minicomputers. We don’t know their expenses so can’t assume they were making insane profits. As I recall, some IBM systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent per month.
- classichasclass 5y ago
  Near as I can determine, The Source never turned a profit. CompuServe eventually did.
- shakna 5y ago
  However, with the point I was trying to make, IBM was recouping their costs on those rentals within a year or two. They had a "disappointing" $2bn profit in a single quarter of 1979 [0] (very roughly, about $7Bn in today's currency), on $16Bn of revenue. They weren't exactly thin margins. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/12/archives/ibm-net-falls-18.html https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/12/archives/ibm-net-falls-18...
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I read your $2B in 1979 is $7B today and thought “that can’t be right!” (Thinking that was much too high.) It turns out that it’s almost $8B in actuality, making me far more wrong than I thought.
SteveGerencser 5y ago
I remember my first $900 phone bill because I had never heard of thing call "local long distance" until I moved to California.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

“corporations trying to make absolutely insane profits off everything that you did, where you were billed per minute by the minute” At least in the case of The Source, it looks like they were leasing time from another company’s minicomputers. We don’t know their expenses so can’t assume they were making insane profits. As I recall, some IBM systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent per month.

classichasclass 5y ago
Near as I can determine, The Source never turned a profit. CompuServe eventually did.
shakna 5y ago
However, with the point I was trying to make, IBM was recouping their costs on those rentals within a year or two. They had a "disappointing" $2bn profit in a single quarter of 1979 [0] (very roughly, about $7Bn in today's currency), on $16Bn of revenue. They weren't exactly thin margins. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/12/archives/ibm-net-falls-18.html https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/12/archives/ibm-net-falls-18...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I read your $2B in 1979 is $7B today and thought “that can’t be right!” (Thinking that was much too high.) It turns out that it’s almost $8B in actuality, making me far more wrong than I thought.

SteveGerencser 5y ago

I remember my first $900 phone bill because I had never heard of thing call "local long distance" until I moved to California.