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It was similar from the user point of view, but it was absolutely different from creator/admin point of view. It was supposed to be a service provided by big cable/telecom companies and not something that everyone would've been able to use to create. The whole architecture gives it away - minitel is merely a display device to a telecom mainframe, paid per minute of connection. The average Joe was not supposed to create their own services/pages.

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Perhaps their plan was to, once successful, create a Minitel AppStore and allow smaller developers ...

Given how big telecoms usually behave, I really don't think so. Remember the fight for usable mobile internet... Ever tried WAP and developing on it?

They set the whole thing up to control it and charge extraorbitant fees for it both to the user and to anyone publishing on it. Minitel as well as WAP. Apple's 30% is peanuts compared to the fees I'm talking about - I mean contracts with minimums in millions.

Good thing Apple kicked their sand castle down. People don't give them enough credit for that.

People do seem to forget about things like Verizon forcing camera phone vendors to disable Bluetooth on their devices to prevent you from being able to transfer image files off the phone without going through Verizon and paying a per image fee.

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