Comment by jvrossb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jvrossb | Hacker News Reader

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  And this wasn't a case of the "free market" winning again. This was just America winning again.

Could you propose alternative explanations at to why the Minitel failed despite the fact it had such a head start? Do you think the internet would have prospered as it did if the only way to access it through the present day was through terminals developed, built, and lent to you by the American Gov't?

  Today we know we need both the private market and the government to build an economy that is both prosperous and beneficial to the people.

Elaborate? I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

I think the fact that managed to call out the 22 year old French author (me) as a 50s era frenzied McCarthyist betrays a stronger, far more irrational ideology in you than is present in my writing. I'm extremely proud of the Minitel and its amazing run (a sentiment shared by other commenters) and simply shared what I believe to be the most plausible and strongest explanation as to why it didn't make it's way out of France and eventually failed.

I don't know why the Minitel failed while the Internet didn't. But the internet started out as a government project, too[1]. Maybe it was because the American government-led effort incorporated the private market better, although, according to your description in the article, the French adopted what was to become Apple's model, and Apple is doing alright so far. And maybe it was due to other reasons, like being ahead of its time, or lack of an international marketing effort (why did the Apple Newton fail?) But in your article you give no compelling evidence to suggest that the Minitel's eventual failure was just a result of it being "state run". Both the internet and the Minitel were state run, and both had a strong private market participation.

If anything, the internet had a very long incubation period in the education system, while the Minitel immediately reached out to businesses. Governments usually don't shine in running businesses, but they do know how to build infrastructure; both the internet and the Minitel are infrastructure, so there's no reason to assume it would fail because it's state-run.

Whatever the reasons, they were more complex than this simplistic explanation (actually, it seems like the main reason is that the internet was already pretty big when Minitel launched – just not in homes – and couldn't be stopped at that stage).

> I think it's still hotly debated and certainly not 'known'.

The measure at which government should regulate the market is debated and varies across countries, but history has proven again and again that neither completely government controlled economies, nor completely free market economies work. We do know that.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Working backwards, the Minitel failed because in 2012 when it was discontinued it was hardly different from its 1983 incarnation. I agree it isn't likely to be a single-cause explanation, but when you examine the history of the Minitel and the ways it failed to adapt, it becomes evident that a huge factor at play was that the Minitel didn't have to respond to market pressures.

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