According to Ben Compaine:
> 
	.  .  .  .  .  
> The message: The Web of 1995 and 1996 was overhyped and the big media players 
> are closing their sites, unable to come up with a business model that makes 
> them any money on the Web. In the scenario, The NY Times has just closed down 
> its Web site after losing $30 million in a year and "300 out of an estimated 
> 500 commercial providers" of original Web content are closing down or 
> drastically scaling back.
	.  .  .  .  .
> 
>The reasons, says the "article," were the clogged bandwidth and the plunge in 
>  advertising revenues when a Dataquest "report" found that Nielsen-I/Pro Web 
> usage statistics were vastly overstated and a "revelation" that 90% of 
> reported hits were generated by "spiders" and "crawlers" from the many index 
> and search services.
	And if the Web in particular, and the Net in general, made no money
	for anybody, except for the pittance earned by people like Joe
	Shea, and the modest fees that businesses would pay to Well-known
	Search engines in order to be listed with/linked to them?  Would
	that be a disaster?  would it?  Some of us might even applaud.
	What an interesting phenomenon that would be:  something of 
	importance and significance in American life and culture that is 
	not commercial.

Best wishes,

Alan McConnell

- -- 
Alan McConnell      The biggest election issues, IMHO:
Pixel Analysis      1.  Campaign finance reform    2.  Campaign finance
(alan@clark.net)    reform   3. Campaign finance reform   4. Campaign fi . .

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End of online-news-digest V1 #562
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