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Comment by icedchai | Hacker News Reader

How do you think we got into this mess in the first place? First it was Netscape, then Microsoft, now Google.

Yet, the web has been prospering for two decades in spite of the quasi-monopoly state of browsers. It's the living evidence that the dominant browser vendor doesn't has as much power as people imagine.

> prospering

Like 90%+ of internet traffic goes to a handful of sites owned by tech giants. Most of what's left is SEO garbage serving those same tech giants' ad networks.

The web has been prospering?

Obviously not things like blogs, or things you’d find via search, or independent forums, or newspaper websites. They certainly aren’t prospering.

But walled gardens like YouTube, Discord, ChatGPT and suchlike that are delivered via the browser are prospering. And as a cross platform GUI system, html is astonishingly popular.

(things which are not the web but happen to be delivered by the same protocols)

"One of the most adopted technologies, the one that is permeating into even native desktop and mobile apps, is not prospering." - HN users, probably.

There's a difference between web technologies and "the web" as an amorphous philosophical construct. Web technologies, as you stated, are obviously doing just fine. I'd argue the latter isn't. To be more specific, the latter as it was envisioned (in a way that I, and I speculate, GP also still subscribe to) 20+ years ago.

"The web" implies an interconnected ecosystem of websites. That the same tech has found adoption with walled gardens is irrelevant.

What is Google? Or Amazon?

I’m sure you can come up with more examples of extremely high value business which would not have happened without the web.

I don't think we all necessarily agree that "high value businesses" is the same as "prospering". If you mean "prospering" as in "making some people rich", sure, but if you mean "being beneficial to society at large", it's certainly debatable.

More like three decades, but I get your point. ;) I remember running Netscape 0.9 something back in 1994.

I remember when you could go down to Circuit City and buy a web browser for money. It came in a cardboard box. Shortly after the era you describe.

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