I think peak web was around 2005, when Google was still working, Amazon was non-bloated, personal pages still were easier to find, and medium/wordpress nonsense was scarce.

Then the fundamental greed driven changes happened, and here we are with an AOL situation again.

So the difference between 2005 (or 2009) and 2019 is greater, and it is for the worse. A lot of programmers are backstabbing and greedy creatures now who pretend to be good but are only after money and power.

I'm not talking about startup founders here, it is the corporate programmers who are insufferable now.

Yes, 'peak organic html' was about 2005.

But this I'm afraid is a little bit of mythology from those who were there at the time, and have/had a certain view of what the 'web ought to be'.

In the 'big big picture' - the web blew up between 1995-2005 in the modern world, and then blew up on a much bigger scale with mobile afterwards.

US is only 5% of world population. Europe not quite 10%.

Our view of 'what the web ought to view' I think has some legit elements, but I'm not sure if they're representative of what real material value is.

The world is big.

Just the mere presence of the web - in all it's incarnations - is a very powerful thing.

It's still roiling and people are still coming online and it's powerful.

I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture.

> I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture.

If only considering the WWW impacts, then sure. In the physical world, however, it's definitely an important artifact, considering how much it's upended things for brick-and-mortar (at all scales) and the whole supply chain / fulfillment / logistics realm.

(And note that "important" should not be taken to mean "beneficial" here; it's already important to the history of these sectors in the same sense that giant asteroids are important to the history of Earth-based life - that is, outright destructive of the current landscape, but might very well result in new opportunities in its wake)