[zamadatix]

It's not going to make any sense if you ask the question now, ask it in 1990. CIDR didn't start until '93 and when they made the request in '90 they had a reasonable case a /16 would be too small (remember, classful networking times). The WWW hadn't even been invented at CERN yet and hardly anybody was using IP still even inside the networking space, what else was going to be done with IP space if not to assign it?

As for why they still own it places like Amazon which hoover up large deaths of space like this must not have made interesting enough offers yet. GE sold 3/8 that way in 2018 for example.

[fragmede]

Amazon also bought up half of MIT's 18/8 in 2017 for an undisclosed pile of money. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14150854

[beckler]

I was at GE when they sold 3/8. It was an absolute nightmare because we still used it internally and had no notice of the sale until after it was done.