But almost nobody had access to the internet before 1995, so the fact that there was a 25 year period in which TCP existed but it wasn't used for much beyond ma

But almost nobody had access to the internet before 1995, so the fact that there was a 25 year period in which TCP existed but it wasn't used for much beyond manually routed emails and FTP isn't that important. Once the web was created and the internet became visual it was only a few years until advertising arrived. And sure, the ads were used to pay hosting costs. Nobody got rich off banner ads on cookery sites. But that's what I said - ads appeared immediately because servers and bandwidth were expensive. So the moment people had to pay their own way instead of being subsidized by the government, ads appeared. Nobody was going to get regulated into bankruptcy in 1995, politicians were largely ignoring the internet back then.