This will change in 1999. The Department of Justice will not break up Microsoft. At some point in 1999, the anti-trust suit against Microsoft will be over. The company will be slapped with big fines but the company will not be broken into little pieces. MS Internet Explorer is more popular than Netscape's browser because IE is slightly better.
Quality still counts for something on the Internet.
The battle between fiber and xDSL pitting the cable companies against the phone companies will not be decided in 1999. The cost of bandwith at backbone speeds will drop dramatically in 1999. However, getting that high speed down to Jon Dough Internet user will not happen in 1999. Large websites will appear to load faster only because their HTML gets pushed on to the Internet faster, not because the modem is faster. Juno is stuck in never, neverland.