Is there anybody out there who still remembers what the original inspiration that lead to the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web was? Does anyone even realize that there used to be some kind of a difference between the two and that the latter is actually much younger then the former? And, in the grand scheme of things, do any of these questions even matter anymore?

I'll give you a hint - the Internet was never intended to become a next generation "get rich quick" pyramid scheme. Conversely, only a few short years ago nobody in their right mind thought of it as "a platform for rapid deployment of large-scale integrated e-commerce solutions" ... whatever that is supposed to mean.

Actually, according to the hopelessly outdated homepage maintained by the increasingly irrelevant W3C.org, "the World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information" and "the embodiment of human knowledge." This means that for years, all the way up until Netscape went public and started the whole IPO craze, the World Wide Web was nothing more than yet another medium for easy electronic data exchange.

The irony of this whole situation is that W3C itself, which was once a rather influential organization, has become pathetically poor. The things got so bad that they are apparently no longer able to afford enough competent Webmasters who would keep their own pages up to date. This, however, is not surprising at all since they are a "dot-org" rather than a "dot-com," and therefore have no way to offer stock options.

In any event, without a powerful standards making nonprofit organization like W3C, it became only a matter of time before the Web could be exploited and abused.

Now, let's face it - the Internet, in its original form, is pretty much dead. The exciting virtual universe of openly expressed diverse opinions, tacky-yet-fun personal pages, useful plain-text academic information, fast (but admittedly geeky) telnet connections, and lively-and-rude UseNet flame wars, is nothing but a fading memory. Granted, WWW no longer stands for "World Wide Wait," but there is hardly anything left that is truly worth waiting for.

It is rather sad to realize that aside from some scattered electronic discussion boards, most Web sites have become largely faceless, disgustingly politically correct, and commercialized beyond belief. Imaginative color schemes, funky layouts, and original content are all pretty much extinct species. Every single e-commerce site now features a plain black-on-white design with an Amazon.com-inspired tabbed interface. Every news column is syndicated. Every idea has been pirated and recycled a hundred times. And those people who once did plain HTML just for fun are now all grown-up and too busy keeping up with the latest buzzword technologies. Caught up in an endless loop of changing jobs and career directions multiple times a year, few of them have any energy left to maintain anything but "Resume" sections of their personal homepages.

On a positive note, the Internet is still free in a sense that it is not controlled by any single commercial entity. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this might no longer hold true just a few years down the road.

So, who is behind the evil forces that are plotting to cast a dark shadow over the Internet? Is it AOL with their new media empire, Cisco which controls all the ins-and-outs of the Internet infrastructure, or Microsoft with their recent "Dot-Net" initiative? There are some rather strong indications that the latter is now very well positioned to set a series of major roadblocks on the "information superhighway."

Even on the surface, there are two key factors that are actively working in Microsoft's favor - their growing dominance in the browser market and the ever-increasing popularity of their development and server tools. With fewer people doing Web design "by hand" and also due to the growing complexity of the Internet itself, even the old-time "open-standards" advocates are starting to wish there was a single easy way to deliver Web content. More and more developers are using Microsoft ASP tools to create Internet Explorer-friendly pages. Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence, individual Internet users (including Microsoft-loathing Mac fans) are also leaving Netscape and other competing browsers behind.

The gloomy picture painted above bares a striking resemblance to the market conditions that allowed the Windows operating system to take over the great majority of personal computers worldwide about a decade ago. It is now only a matter of time before Microsoft comes up with a half decent Internet-based product that would be analogous to Windows 3.x in that it could unite both developers and users around a single "platform." And, this is exactly what they are trying to achieve with the "Dot-Net" effort.

As of right now, Microsoft pledges that XML will serve as the universal data-exchange standard for all their upcoming Internet-based applications. If they keep this promise, it might seem like it would always be possible for the Internet community to select non-Microsoft products that support XML. However, keeping in mind how easy it was for Netscape to introduce their own proprietary extensions to the original HTML standard, there is no reason to believe that Microsoft will not use the same tactics to lock everybody else out of the game.

In essence, if the above predictions turn out to be accurate, the Internet of the future is going to become a highly unified "platform" controlled by the same company that has long ruled the desktop computing realm. And, if Microsoft indeed gets broken up into two separate entities, it will be the "applications" business that will inherit the said "platform" and we'll be stuck with two monopolies rather than one.

Furthermore, if history is to repeat itself, Microsoft (or its successors) might soon gain dominant power to set the direction in which the online technology is going to develop. In particular, the whole "Internet Appliance" movement could be quietly obliterated unless it is Microsoft itself who is endorsing it. In addition to that, by refusing to provide support for desktop platforms other than Windows (and, maybe, Mac), Microsoft will have yet another way to make sure it keeps the entire personal computing industry on a short leash.

Either way, the Wintel PC is here to stay whether the whole "Internet platform" is going to be an integral part of the future generations of Windows or something developed by a separate company. Which only reminds us once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same.