The people who wanted to control the internet were used to thinking of mass communications media as a giant firehose, to be aimed at passive consumers. They'd talk, we'd listen, and things would stay the same as they'd always been. That's not how the internet was designed, though. The death from above mindset that business has used regarding the internet simply doesn't work. That doesn't work.
Markets are conversations, and nobody wants to be the listener all the time.
The companies that were so confident that they could turn the internet into a one-way medium have gone out of business. Instead of proving that The Powers That Be could turn the internet into what they wanted, we've proved that any moron can run a company at a loss until the money runs dry. The Big Boys who came onto the scene with a shout have been slinking away with a quiet whimper for the past year or so. To make it on the internet, you need another way of looking at things. You need to know what Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law are, and what their implications are .