> The web has to mature beyond advertising as a business model.
Is the Web a business model?
The Web really is machines serving HTML, JSON, XML,... over HTTP/HTTPS across physical connections. There are several ways of looking at this, but often enough the debate gets reduced into a dichotomy.
I'll put this into two simplified extremes.
The Web is a shared infrastructure seen as a "public commons". You can access that infrastructure, request/receive bits and bytes from other machines for free and if you want to host content yourself, you connect your own machine to that infrastructure and you share content via your own machine for free. You carry the costs of the usage of the infrastructure yourself, regardless of the direction of data traffic across the network.
The Web and it's infrastructure are commodities. Storage, maintenance, bandwidth,... are expenses that should be offloaded. The main goal of hosting and making information available on the Web is to, either directly or indirectly, make a marginal profit. You pay for the privilege of accessing someone else's machine to download data, and you get paid by those who want to gain access to information you host on your own machine.
The problem with the statement above is that it implies that both extremes are mutually exclusive, and only the latter one is viable.
This is false.
The Web is ultimately a decentralized network which is build on top of intentions and goals of humans. And those intentions and goals can be wildly differing. There are parts of the Web that operate according to the former idea, and there are parts that operate according to the latter. Both exist, and there's a spectrum in between.
In the analogue world, the same notion translates into private businesses, non-profits, cooperations, community initiatives, charities, public initiatives and so on.
Goodreads choosing to close down it's public API is just one case choosing to move towards one side of the spectrum. It's by no means an indication that the entirety of the Web and - more specifically - it's denizens decide to move towards that side.
That spectrum does emerge based on laws of economics, though.
Goodreads has always been a private business. public API's of private businesses are never truly "Public". They are either a courtesy or a business investment. And they will step away from such courtesy if the costs outstrip the benefits.
The Web isn't quite the same as public space though - parks, beaches, forests, streets, grasslands,... - because the vast amount of infrastructure is privately owned. In that regard, the notion of "The Web is a Commons" is only true to the extent that private people are willing to accept and support that idea, and are willing to carry a shared part of the costs.
It's that last part which makes all the difference. Operating a basic website with a limited number of visitors comes at a low cost, and so one could operate a small Goodreads like website with a niche of books. There are plenty of examples of people keeping freely accessible blogs and the like with their own book reviews.
Goodreads tries to turn that idea into a business model. The intention of generating a profit is very distinct in that regard. However, not only is it hard to sell the opinions of other people, it's even harder if costs generated by trying to cater to an audience of millions outstrip the revenue generated.
The Web isn't financial centre. Just like London nor New York aren't representative as to the entirety of human society. Big businesses are - ultimately - only a part of the Web, just as much as they are only a part of society. And if their business models fail to keep them operational, the Web, and society, will, ultimately, churn on without them.
That said, the there is a tilt towards the second idea in some areas where perhaps it would be prudent of us to invest more in the public space model, or in other ways shape things more to our liking.
As the infrastructure changes the dominating idea shapes it.
As an example there used to be (and stills is, but the change is evident) vendors selling music recordings. Vinyl, tape, cd. The market traded in tangible artifact that could change owner, could be copied (legally or not) could be put in a library and lent out.
In Sweden we even pay a special copy compensation tax when buying any device with storage capacity to tunnel some money towards “content creators” in support of this distribution form.
However as the technology has shifted, allowing for direct streaming, the trading of artifacts has disappeared. The laws and economic realities now promote a market with fewer vendors offering only a limited catalogue of recordings, and only in a form that can never leave their control effectively.
This is only an example. And I think this particular one is mostly about reviewing the legal landscape.
Another example might be how protocols like RSS, XMPP, SMTP was used for interoperability and allow different vendors to offer compatible services. As things shift, this time perhaps more due to economic realities, the dominating tendency is still to erode interoperability and dominating players shape the technology towards their more siloed reality. Perhaps we need more tax funded players, (public service?), simply competing and collaborating to tilt things back again.
Is the Web a business model?
The Web really is machines serving HTML, JSON, XML,... over HTTP/HTTPS across physical connections. There are several ways of looking at this, but often enough the debate gets reduced into a dichotomy.
I'll put this into two simplified extremes.
The Web is a shared infrastructure seen as a "public commons". You can access that infrastructure, request/receive bits and bytes from other machines for free and if you want to host content yourself, you connect your own machine to that infrastructure and you share content via your own machine for free. You carry the costs of the usage of the infrastructure yourself, regardless of the direction of data traffic across the network.
The Web and it's infrastructure are commodities. Storage, maintenance, bandwidth,... are expenses that should be offloaded. The main goal of hosting and making information available on the Web is to, either directly or indirectly, make a marginal profit. You pay for the privilege of accessing someone else's machine to download data, and you get paid by those who want to gain access to information you host on your own machine.
The problem with the statement above is that it implies that both extremes are mutually exclusive, and only the latter one is viable.
This is false.
The Web is ultimately a decentralized network which is build on top of intentions and goals of humans. And those intentions and goals can be wildly differing. There are parts of the Web that operate according to the former idea, and there are parts that operate according to the latter. Both exist, and there's a spectrum in between.
In the analogue world, the same notion translates into private businesses, non-profits, cooperations, community initiatives, charities, public initiatives and so on.
Goodreads choosing to close down it's public API is just one case choosing to move towards one side of the spectrum. It's by no means an indication that the entirety of the Web and - more specifically - it's denizens decide to move towards that side.
That spectrum does emerge based on laws of economics, though.
Goodreads has always been a private business. public API's of private businesses are never truly "Public". They are either a courtesy or a business investment. And they will step away from such courtesy if the costs outstrip the benefits.
The Web isn't quite the same as public space though - parks, beaches, forests, streets, grasslands,... - because the vast amount of infrastructure is privately owned. In that regard, the notion of "The Web is a Commons" is only true to the extent that private people are willing to accept and support that idea, and are willing to carry a shared part of the costs.
It's that last part which makes all the difference. Operating a basic website with a limited number of visitors comes at a low cost, and so one could operate a small Goodreads like website with a niche of books. There are plenty of examples of people keeping freely accessible blogs and the like with their own book reviews.
Goodreads tries to turn that idea into a business model. The intention of generating a profit is very distinct in that regard. However, not only is it hard to sell the opinions of other people, it's even harder if costs generated by trying to cater to an audience of millions outstrip the revenue generated.
The Web isn't financial centre. Just like London nor New York aren't representative as to the entirety of human society. Big businesses are - ultimately - only a part of the Web, just as much as they are only a part of society. And if their business models fail to keep them operational, the Web, and society, will, ultimately, churn on without them.