At 12:07am -0800 12/7/00, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>On the other side of the fence: none of the Xanies would have predicted
>the widespread implementation and immense success and popularity of
>*free* search engines. Free? Are you *nuts*? :)
I disagree. The Internet was not originally a commercial venture.
It started as a free service to connect researchers with Arpanet in
1969. Military personnel got free access, as did graduate students
in the computer departments. The first search engines started
appearing in 1990. Archie, Veronica, WAIS, VSL, and the like, were
all free. The concept of paying for access or information didn't
really become common until 1995 with the advent of AOL. For decades,
free access to information was the default. It is the concept of
paying for information that would have been zany or unforeseen by the
early adopters.
-- Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:34 MDT