Call me crazy but I think the Web is ruining itself because it did not follow Google. Google made its mark with a simple tactic. It made anyone who felt like it into a business. It did this by offering the right to create little text ads for a few dollars and let the world know about your wares. You might be a coach or invent real, edible cookies, or write how-to monographs. It did not make any difference. Whatever you did, you could pay Google and get your ad up in no time.

It was this simple transaction, repeated millions of times over, that turned Google from the equivalent of a garage band to a superstar.

Then, nobody followed suit.

Imitation could have saved us all

As the Web grew, we witnessed all sorts of busts, but Google plowed ahead. Those little ads added up and helped us all do anything we wanted to do. Those were the days. If you look around these days you will see that Bells And Whistles now rule a corporatized Web. A corporatized Web is one run by corporations largely ignorant of what works.

The tell on these corporatized Web operations is that they rely on corporatized Web companies and satellite businesses like Cambridge Analytica, to tell them what to do.

Suppressing users who provide the content

No longer do individuals help rule the roost. Bells and whistles do. They cost money and we have the Web as it is now.

It is less free and much more difficult -- it wallows in the amoral mentality -- lying to the public if it will garner better results than truth.

The Twitter example

Twitter is actually two companies. They are Twitter and Medium. Both of them are examples of corporate mentality triumphing over common sense and hamstringing operations.

Twitter could -- with one decision -- turn into a Google rival. All it would need to do is replicate Adwords and Adsense and enable individual users to place little text ads on their profile pages. No bells, no whistles and no demeaning efforts to get users to pay for ads to promote the free content they are already giving away.

If profile pages rather than "home streams" were normative Twitter would grow like topsy because the race for followers would be on.

Medium bared

Medium is a Twitter spin-off in a manner of speaking. It now wants $60 a year -- a $5 monthly subscription -- to enable one to read content they have sequestered in publications they have convinced to become membership operations. The result is that Medium now promotes content that one cannot access without coming up with a subscription. With the Google approach, Medium would prosper and no one would be offended.

Extend this philosophy so people could advertise on any site they like and everyone could play -- and we might have a Web again.
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