[ido]

"The Web" and "E-Commerce" ended up being quite gigantic "unmet niches" though!

[mazurnification]

If smth is bubble it does not mean that said smth has no value. It just means that there is over investment and thus inefficient investment. Like housing bubble - nobody argues that houses are not needed and are not big part of economy.

[julkali]

Yes, but only 15-20 years later in the extent expected for 2000. The technology wasn't there yet, just like with LLMs.

[cheschire]

Right, one could say it was actually the smartphone that made the Internet as successful as it was being pitched to be in the late 90’s.

[irishcoffee]

From where I sit, smartphones completely ruined the internet.

If you're defining "successful" in the sense of people-making-a-lot-of-money I completely agree.

If you're talking about the internet in 2005 vs 2025, smartphones completely ruined the internet. At one point I had half my high school using HTML in their AIM profiles because they thought mine was cool.

Now kids can hardly even type on an actual, physical keyboard.

[cheschire]

We're in complete agreement.

[kjkjadksj]

The tech was there. The websites worked fine. The issue was number of internet users was too low. Look at number of internet users today vs 1999…

[fc417fc802]

> The issue was number of internet users was too low.

I'd argue that's because the tech wasn't there yet. Not the network or other web tech itself but rather the average-person-using-a-computer tech.

[rollcat]

The technology was there all along, and it's ironic that we're discussing it on this website of all. Look up ViaWeb.

[rsynnott]

Yes, but generally not for the companies who were closely involved in the dot-com bubble; Amazon is probably literally the only exception of any significance.

And, well, not all bubbles go as well as that. See the cryptocurrency one, say. Or any of a number of _previous_ AI bubbles.

[WackyFighter]

The startups/businesses that provided value survived the bubble bursting.