My main takeaway here was that Gates thought that the cost of distribution on the internet would be so low that there would be no large business that could form. However one of the interviewers pushes back by saying that because the cost of distribution would be so low, aggregators would naturally form a monopoly on this business. Incredibly prescient point in a world of Facebooks and Googles. Anyone know who she is,…
Neither FB nor GOOG have become such monopolies in that type of business they were talking about. What Gates said hold true today. Think for example about a one person business like daringfireball.net, that was the type of business Gates was envisioning. Or Drudge report.
They are entrenched and are not expanding their services, instead, they are digging in and keeping their foothold within their regions, limiting/eliminating competition, both from a rules/laws (like preventing municipal ISPs from forming) and limiting their service footprint to maximize their "profits" within their regions. Next expanding, but always increasing the amount they charge to poor service and access to the "internet."
If anything, it appears that ISP behavior is similar to the original Ma-Bell (USA) telephone Corp. It looks like somebody needs to break them up. But that's wishful thinking this day & age, just like having a nation wide (USA) fiber deploy to all states, cities and towns. Imagine, a Renaissance would develop.
Peace
