[CalRobert]

Everyone's different but I think I felt like the increasing polish and commercialization of the web killed it slowly. And that makes sense to an extent, as there was money to be made people would invest more (and have entire teams) in making ad-optimised content instead of just having one person cranking out homestarrunner or thebestpageintheuniverse or what have you.

Also, the closing of open systems. This whole idea of "whatsapp me or slack me or discord me" - that's ridiculous! It's _obvious_ that I should be able to use whatever client I like to talk to people, just like I did with gaim and AIM and MSN messenger and ICQ etc. etc. Now we're perilously close to the point where websites will just block you if you're not logged in (conveniently via Google using their browser, of course! Firefox users can get lost.) I can even get the need for it as AI makes bots increasingly good, but it sucks.

We still have https://search.marginalia.nu/ at least.

Edit: Also re: open systems - we went from default-open with desktop computers to default-closed on phones. Now you and your work exist at the pleasure of and for the purpose of enriching Apple and Google. Android SHOULD be something you can run and do with as you please, but of course you can't if you want to be able to do things like use your banking app.