Agreed, but I think people really underestimated the forces at work that would cause so much consolidation into a couple internet giants.
The original idea was that with the barrier to entry being so low, anyone and everyone could set up their own websites, mail servers, etc.
But with it being so easy to compare and contrast service (i.e. the market being so open), it means that the competitive forces naturally consolidate to a winner-take-all model. If when starting out Cloudflare was just 5% better than the competition, it could have easily taken the vast majority of the mindshare on the internet. Couple that with the fact that there are huge advantages with scale to a business like Cloudflare's, and it's not hard to see how so much of the internet has become dependent on it.
The original idea was that with the barrier to entry being so low, anyone and everyone could set up their own websites, mail servers, etc.
But with it being so easy to compare and contrast service (i.e. the market being so open), it means that the competitive forces naturally consolidate to a winner-take-all model. If when starting out Cloudflare was just 5% better than the competition, it could have easily taken the vast majority of the mindshare on the internet. Couple that with the fact that there are huge advantages with scale to a business like Cloudflare's, and it's not hard to see how so much of the internet has become dependent on it.