“AOL, on the other hand, has shown profits. It used its own free
product–countless floppies and CD-ROMs–to hook millions of
customers into spending 20 bucks a month to get on-line and stay
there. Today, AOL has an astonishing 54% of the Internet access
business in the U.S. For this, the stock market valued AOL so
highly that the company was able to buy Time Warner for $156
billion, even though AOL’s sales are just $4.8 billion and Time
Warner’s are over $20 billion….”
“What’s behind this boundless buoyancy? Is it the genius of
guys like Jeff Bezos and Steve Case? Is it the low-friction
efficiencies of e-commerce? Is it the intoxicating sense that the
Net plainly changes everything? No, it’s the people who gave us the
Net, Linux and every other technology that is good because it’s
free.“
“It’s the hackers.”