What made that time so exciting? For the first time in our experience, the spread of the Web had, momentarily at least, leveled the playing field of media distribution. The Web's open design and standards meant that publishers of all stripes could stop worrying about getting their products to people; all you had to do was plug your content into the Web, and anyone who had access to the Web could get it. You didn't have to pay for shelf space or rack space or airtime, or pay off regulators to reserve spectrum for you, or worry about delivery truck drivers going on strike. The Web didn't eliminate distribution costs (there are still servers to buy and bandwidth charges to pay), but it dramatically reduced them, and gave the notion that "everyone's a publisher" some credence beyond hype.

"Publisher" covers a vast spectrum, though, from AOL Time Warner to your local HTML whiz kid. As commercial publishers colonized the Web and private individuals flexed their new publishing muscles, two vastly different visions of the Web's purpose and value emerged. Old-line media corporations that viewed the Web as a threat and commercial start-ups that saw it as an opportunity shared one perspective: The Web had to be made a safe place for profits, whatever it took in the way of advertising, subscriptions, privacy invasions and other increasingly desperate measures. Meanwhile, the do-it-yourself Web publishers -- from the "build your own page" homesteaders of 1995 to the more recent explosion of weblogs -- reveled in the new ease with which they could post information, from personal trivia to headline-making revelations, to the entire world, and didn't worry much about money.

In no other medium have "pro" and amateur, commercial and "just for fun" found themselves so inseparably intertwined. But along the way each camp tended to conveniently forget some facts: The amateurs lost sight of how heavily their "free" publishing was subsidized by venture-capital investments in Net infrastructure -- investments that, having proved largely unprofitable, are no longer flowing. The pros, meanwhile, talked up projections of vast growth for Internet usage, without acknowledging how much of that use went to e-mail or Britney Spears fan pages, neither of which was likely to boost a media company's bottom line.

Thanks to this dynamic, the Web we know today evolved. The medium became a laboratory for big corporate media and technology companies to test new software and new business models at relatively low risk and cost. Much of the Web's seven-year history is a chronicle of these failures: The e-commerce missteps of 1996 (remember Marketplace MCI?), the city-site wars of 1997, the me-too portal mania of 1998 and 1999, the dot-com dollar palooza that peaked and then cratered in 2000. At the same time, the Web became an enormous global water cooler and party line, a gossip-amplifying, hobby-driven cornucopia of trivial pursuits -- ham radio on speed, only you didn't have to learn Morse code.

A lot of predictions made with great idealism didn't pan out. After a brief first wave of innovative new sites -- Hotwired, Feed, Word, Suck, Salon and Slate -- the notion that the Web would foster a renaissance of independent publishing quickly withered in the face of some hard truths about Web media: Yes, it's easier and cheaper to put up a site than to print a newspaper or magazine or start a TV station, but journalism and information still cost money. And once you hang out your Web shingle you still have to figure out a way for people to find out that it's there.

So of that first wave of high-profile "indies," Hotwired and Word are long gone, Feed and Suck have just gone into deepfreeze and Salon's financial difficulties have become a long-running soap opera in the financial press. (Slate may belong to this group in its target audience, but it is now so deeply intertwined with the Microsoft Network that its Web address has become a mere redirect from "www.slate.com" to "slate.msn.com," and its editor, Michael Kinsley, says he doesn't even have a separate balance sheet.)

There's no reason the Web can't support a flourishing field of independent professional publishers in the middle ground between Big Media and feisty amateur -- no reason, that is, as long as you give this still-fledgling business time to sort itself out. Web users will, eventually, accept the necessity of paying subscription fees for the content they really want. Advertisers will, eventually, stop holding the Web to standards of guaranteed effectiveness that their bloated print and broadcast budgets could never meet. Sustainable businesses will evolve out of the carnage of the dot-com downturn, or grow off the corpses of failed start-ups. Broadband connections and software improvements will, across a decade-long vista, reduce users' frustration and impatience. Anyone, anywhere, will still be able to put up a Web site and reach anyone else online with news, gossip, truth or lies.

One big "but" hangs in the way of this rosy scenario, however. As Microsoft and AOL play out their corporate duel, each will inevitably seek to lock in customers and lock out competitors. I think a significant number of Web users, myself included, would be happy to see these two giants cripple each other in the process. The trouble is, their moves are more likely to injure bystanders -- and could wreck the Net itself.

The Free Software Project
Read Andrew Leonard's book-in-progress on Linux and open source -- and post your comments.