

The Internet Is As Dead And Boring As You Want It To Be - danielha
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/08/the-internet-is.html

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myoung8
I agree to a certain extent. I don't expect to see any mind-blowing
innovations on the Internet until bandwidth constraints dissipate, but that
definitely doesn't mean it's dead.

Think about the automobile. Fundamentally, it hasn't changed since the Model
T. However, there have been many incremental improvements that have made a
significant impact on our lives (A/C, seat belts, power-steering/brakes, GPS,
auto-parking).

In about 20 years, the technology they're working on right now at Stanford for
the DARPA Challenge will be commercialized and cars will drive themselves.
That will be mind-blowing.

Hopefully we'll see something game-changing on the net sooner rather than
later.

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steve
> But even more importantly, the web is primarily a communications platform,
> not a broadcasting or publishing platform, those are secondary uses.

Except he's wrong on this. File sharing has always been an extremely popular
use for the web. Most of the social networking platforms allow you to publish
to a large audience of people you don't really know. Facebook does this to a
lesser extent, but that's why it's not #1.

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rms
This is the same type of "dead" as when Paul Graham said Microsoft is dead. Of
course they aren't literally dead. They're still profitable. But they aren't
leading in innovations and they never will again. Similarly, the internet is
dead because many breakthrough technologies will require exponentially more
bandwidth.

PG calling Microsoft dead worked better because all it takes for the internet
to become undead (alive?) is fiber to many homes.

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aarontait
I kind of agree with Mark Cuban. Sure, there are a bunch of new services on
the web, but anyone could predict this linear growth in innovation. The thing
is, we are not seeing the exponential growth in mindshare and adoption that we
saw in the 90's. We are still using the same or similar standards that we used
in the 90's as well. When the internet started to gain interest, it was mind
blowing. It simply isn't anymore. More bandwidth could allow us to deliver
deeper innovations. Imagine if Gigabit connections were the norm. We could
bring massively parallel grid computing to consumers. Just imagine encoding
H.264 in seconds instead of hours. Right now we are in a stalemate with the
telcos.

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omouse
I hate how the Internet is US-centric. There are many other countries that are
more progressive and have insanely fast Internet connection speeds such as
Sweden, Japan, Korea, etc. It's only in the US (and Canada) that the telcos
are allowed to be complete assholes towards customers.

~~~
steve
Let's get real. Unless you're going for the asian markets, those other
countries really don't matter.

~~~
whacked_new
Getting real means they matter.

~~~
steve
Getting real means lets see some numbers.

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whacked_new
I hate sourging for sources, and it seems obvious enough, but fair point. This
is from a quick google.

I'll talk regarding the Asian market, which is far from saturated (this I'm
not going to go compile more research on, so challenge me if you will)

[http://www.blogherald.com/2005/05/25/world-wide-blog-
count-f...](http://www.blogherald.com/2005/05/25/world-wide-blog-count-for-
may-now-over-60-million-blogs/) Old, but if this is good, 15M blogs in South
Korea is quite a large market.

[http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/06/27/yahoo-japan-more-
page...](http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/06/27/yahoo-japan-more-page-views-
than-yahoo-us/) Recent, but here again I will go uncited: Yahoo dies against
Google in USA, but in Asia they have been king. Yahoo is plenty real, and Asia
matters to them, a lot.

You might be fine with the North American market. It's hella big. But if you
have an entry point into Asia and don't use it, that's wasted potential,
because cloning works on an international scale.
<http://mashable.com/2007/08/19/doktus/>

What's so real about the internet is that it's zero distance from anywhere
around the globe, and only a relatively small number of companies exploit this
fully. If more companies did, Mark Cuban wouldn't be complaining about it
being boring today.

~~~
steve
Are you blind? I said except for asian markets.

~~~
whacked_new
Woops! You got me. I got carried away. I'll only admit being half blind
though, because I'm willing to bet that "emerging markets" will eventually
visit the same cycles of soft development that are taking TechCrunch headlines
now. Brazil is not a question. Vietnam/Thailand... ok that's SE Asian.

Turkey is a possibility. A little west of India are others. East European
countries like Slovenia. Alright, maybe the effects aren't immediate enough to
be obvious like South Korea, but new markets will appear and you might just
want to do something about it if you have the chance.

I guess I failed to back myself, oh well. I don't need to change your opinion
though. Whatever works.

~~~
steve
I cannot dispute that "eventually" many things will happen:)

