[repolfx]

No it wasn't. Vast reams of content were hosted exclusively on GeoCities. In fact almost all "home pages" were on GeoCities or AOL back then. There has never really been a time in the history of the internet when a few small providers or companies didn't have outsized dominance - DARPA early on, then Netscape, AOL and GeoCities, then Microsoft, Blogger, WordPress.

This sort of discussion looks often like rose tinted spectacles. The past wasn't so different to today.