[9776] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Sizing the Internet market
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Stephens)
Fri Jan 21 02:38:04 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: stephens@clark.dgim.doc.ca (Andrew Stephens)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 09:31:03
In article James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu> writes:
>Subject: Re: Sizing the Internet market
>Date: Wed, 19 Jan 1994 18:34:24 -0500
>From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
>Why is this relevant? I want to make it clear that I think
>it's important not to overestimate the effect of an interface
>or to underestimate the effect of price on the success of an
>Internet access company. Pipeline's growth rate aside,
>I think that people are more willing to put up with a poor
>interface in an attempt to save money than they are to shell
>out a significantly greater amount of cash to pay for a better
>interface.
While not wanting to be drawn unnecessarily into a debate, I just wondered if
anyone had yet drawn the obvious (to my mind anyway) parallel between the
Internet as we know it today and the PC market of ten years ago?
The whole interface thing reminds me of Mac vs Dos. People want the snazzy
interfaces but will only pay the vanilla prices. So you get Macs gouging out
the high end and pcs developing a multiplicity of solutions at the low end. I
guess the res of it all is, that ultimately, only the snazzy interface will do
(except for the wizards who think that if you can't hack code off the command
prompt you're a wimp).
The interesting thing wrt the Internet is that things happen so damn fast it
doesn't really matter if you've got great taste or you're less filling, in the
end the markets and technology will speed towards some form of convergence and
provide the interfaces and the low prices -- and soon.
I've noticed that the emergence of a FreeNet in Ottawa has brought a whole
bunch of Internet vendors flooding into town. A year ago, no one even talked
about it. Now we're getting competition and great prices. Even though you can
dial into the FreeNet for free (it does cost your time and innumerable dial-in
attempts) it does have the crappy interface, only offers e-mail and gopher and
kicks you off after an hour. Power users will pay for higher end services
*including* interfaces. Its just kinda fun that we have the choice...
Andrew
Andrew Stephens | ISIS -
Manager, Information Network Infrastructure | Access for
Industry & Science Canada | *All* Canadians
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