The Internet's Inflection Point

Are we approaching an inversion point for the Internet, wonders Ben Evans. Here’s what he means. Look back at how the (layman) Internet got started:

“When Netscape launched in 1994 and kicked off the consumer internet, there were maybe 100m (million) PCs on earth, and over half of them were in the USA.”

Inevitably then, with such a skewed distribution of users:

“American companies set the agenda and created most of the important products and services, and American attitudes, cultures and laws around regulation and speech dominated.”

 

And today?

“80-90% of internet users are now outside the USA.”

The invention of the smartphone changed the uses of the Internet dramatically:

“The internet became vastly more important. In the last decade it has gone from being interesting and exciting but not really an important part of most people’s lives to being a central part of society.”

 

All of which brings us to Evans’ point about an inversion point, a point in time from which it will no longer be true that “the important companies and products themselves are American”.

 

Evans wonders if TikTok is the representation of this ongoing transformation from an America dominated (companies, values) Internet to an Internet that is much more diverse, and at times, flat out contradictory with American values:

“This is the first time that Americans have really had to deal with their teenagers using a form of mass media that isn’t created in their country by people who mostly share their values. It’s from somewhere else. That’s compounded by the fact that the ‘somewhere else’ is China, with all of the political and geopolitical issues that come with that.”