[166] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Finding material that went around the net awhile ago -- Amix
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Gilmore)
Thu Nov 15 07:18:59 1990
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 90 02:35:54 PST
From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore)
To: com-priv@psi.com
morris@windom.UCAR.EDU (Don Morris) wrote:
> Now if there were a nice database somewhere on which I could
> query "terminal servers" and "FDDI-to-ethernet bridge" and I get
> all the product info from the contributing vendors, I would be
> happy.
> Presumably vendors would pay a subscription fee for this database.
I know a startup company (American Information Exchange in Palo Alto)
that wants to do something much like this. Trouble is, they can't do
it over the Internet (it's commercial!) and they need a large pool
of customers to even think about breaking even (they've gone through
a good bit of venture money, built nice software & interfaces, etc).
The neat part about Amix is it's a market. You can browse the
summaries of information, and comments from readers, at a rock bottom
rate; when you decide to get some piece of info, you pay the price of
that info, which is set by the seller and includes a percentage to
Amix. If existing documents are too expensive or don't cover an area
that people want to read about, somebody else will make money by
writing another that's cheaper or better -- free market in action, online.
The way you find those great messages from 6 months ago on the net in
there is, some user pays the storage cost of them in the hope that
other people will buy them later. The best, most discriminating
"collectors" and "indexers" will of course make the most money.
This is one of those "things you will find on a commercial Internet"
that somebody wanted to write about. Another is worldwide consulting,
writing, and tech support services. (Amix also brokers
"mini-consulting" in which you advertise a need and other users submit
private bids for your project, which you are free to pursue, drop,
accept, negotiate, or whatever. Amix takes a cut if&when you accept.)
Now wouldn't this service be great for education and research? Too bad
the politics gets in the way of their providing it...(it'd go under
*real* fast if broke universities were the only customers, but they
could piggyback on the higher volume, wealthier commercial users).
John
