Of crystal balls and penguins

Kelly McNeill writes “Back in early ’97, it was with great dismay that I heard rumors suggesting Microsoft’s intentions to split the Web into two tiers — one for rich corporations and another for “the rest.” However, one of the wonderful things about the Web is that, by its nature, it has to function so that everyone has a nearly equal opportunity of exposure, without regard to how much each person has in the bank. Fortunately, Microsoft’s plans came to naught — the resilience of the Web infrastructure proved itself. How fortunate are we that the basic architecture of the Web was wrought without any assistance from a software behemoth. “