[wwweston]

> Then it would have ended up like Gopher

That's a decent guess, but I think it's also possible it would've followed the path of one of the pre-web online services like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, or eWorld. Those systems are what happens when somebody owns the marketplace and you need to get permission to set up shop, which (if the WWW took off at all) would more or less have been the state of things while the patents lasted.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the realm of the app store in some ways.

[tomkin]

Funny. I think I just realized that Facebook has become AOL – keywords and all.

[jacques_chester]

I remember when movie trailers had AOL keywords in them. Now it's "Like Action Drivel on Facebook!"