> "open" as in anyone can make a website

Anyone can make an app too.

> if it's has one good article, it will show up in some google query's result.

Maybe buried deep in the 100th page, but not the front.

> Anyone can make an app too.

On iOS, this is only true if they're in good standing with Apple and have their approval, while also paying the yearly $100 Apple tax.

All hosting providers or app platforms also have a ""tAX""

Wait till you find out about paying for bandwidth.

This is hacker news, none of us has heard of nor care about the highly technical details you speak of

> Anyone can make an app too.

After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers

> Maybe buried deep in the 100th page

But they can be found and share, as opposed to apps of a non existent category where average people publish what they are working on, their thoughts, or whatever. App Store and Google Play search would crumble at the scale of the number of websites in existence right now (~2 billions). Remember that search engines index what's inside those websites too not just their name and description.

> After they install some bloated IDE, learn some "tech", and pay the gatekeepers

Tell me how making and hosting a website is absolutely free.

You could not make this argument even 10 years ago, when you could absolutely make a sites on any of wordpress, tumblr, yahoo or blogspot completely free. These days there are even more choices ranging from WYCIWYG (Squarespace & the like) to absolutely free full CI/CD-ed platforms (heroku, Zeit, GitHub pages...). It's not like there is a duopoly on web hosting.

But I guess the more important aspect of the word "free" is that no one could gatekeep you from making a website, unlike app stores where there is a review process.