Re:quality web sites?? where are they???? (Score 1)

When the internet first hit, almost all websites were free. If Joe wanted to tell the world about his love of aviation, he set up a website. People put in lots of hours, with quality information.

I know this may be hard to believe, but the Internet != the web. Before Mosaic came around people used talk, wais, ftp, etc. The Internet was operational 25+ years before the Web grew on it.

Or I can just point to IM. They're not the web, but they use the Internet.

But you do have a valid point about commercialism. When people started domain squatting (and getting rewarded)...

But if the alternative is having to pay for usage, then maybe it's not so bad.. you always have the choice of paying $5/month for your own website and exchanging web info w/o ads (or file sharing, or whatever you wish to use the net for).

Google has become quite a crutch.. get an obscure error message and you can have a solution in a minute. 10+ years ago, you'd have a company paying your $10/hour to browse around on a site like Compu$erve trying to find the answer.

Corporations are there to generate money for shareholders. Why do all cell phone plans cost $40+/month? Or cable, etc.. because it's what the market will bear. As long as your neighbors are willing to pony up the cash to get those items that they have to have, they'll cost what they do.