[eksith]

> How did we lose the freedom

Money came into the picture. And I'd say we're in worse shape now since even in the AOL days, you would still know that this isn't the real "internet". Now, we've been lulled in the false sense that we're getting unfiltered (un-throttled) access, when in fact, it's just a carefully crafted image.

I look forward to the day "Internet Service Provider" has been completely replaced with "Ubiquitous Wireless Mesh".

[crusso]

Money came into the picture.

You have it completely backwards.

I "discovered" the Internet in 1988 when I got a job in the IT department of the University I attended. I LOVED it. I transferred files, participated a lot in news groups, played MUDs, made friends in Europe... it was wonderful.

When I graduated a few years later, I had to kiss the Internet goodbye. Without attending a major University that poured tons of money into maintaining a connection to the Internet, I had no hope of staying on it. I remember telling my parents about this amazing network of computers and saying something to the effect of, "It's fantastic, but I don't see how most people will ever get to use it because it's so expensive." Afterall, the Internet had been in existence for decades but was completely unavailable to home users.

Then they opened the Internet up for commercial use and the web came along. MONEY CAME INTO THE PICTURE. Tons of it. A few years later, every business felt like it had to be on the Internet in some way. With all that money flowing into web sites and interconnects, access from home became dirt cheap.

Commercialization is what made the Internet available for the masses. It amazes me that here we are not even twenty years later and people are rewriting history, demonizing the very framework that made the Internet successful.

[eksith]

Perhaps I should clarify.

When money came into the picture, small-time ISPs and countless dial-up providers (many who offered some short time free) were popping up everywhere. They were quickly gobbled up or mismanaged to the ground as time went on and what remained was far from the competition (the more equal peers concept) as now only handful of companies control access to the world.

Your university was likely connected via early backbone which would have been sold to a company or is being maintained outside it's jurisdiction and is likely being manipulated purely for exploitation.

Commercialization isn't killing the internet. Monopolization is.

[crusso]

Commercialization isn't killing the internet. Monopolization is.

At the end of the day, I look at the way that entrepreneurs like those on HN are able to exploit the Internet. With a laughably small investment in infrastructure and connectivity, a lone developer can spin up the "next big thing" in the cloud.

So sure, the structure of the Internet has changed and in SOME ways it may look like some major consolidation has happened. But in other ways, the diversity of connectivity options has exploded which more than balances out some corporate consolidation in the ISP space.