As someone that lived through it, two things stuck with me
1. YouTube just worked, it relied on Flash and that was installed on almost every computer. IIRC google video required some other plugin and it didn’t work great.
2. There was a lot more content to watch, probably because they were less good at filtering copyrighted content.
The California DOI is requiring that companies issue some sort of "reasonable" refund, which has to be justified to the department in some way. Other states will likely do something similar.
Don't forgoet that the monopoly comes at the cost that they are required to keep a lot of post offices open in rural areas, which is a very unprofitable enterprise.
It feels to me like any large company is a punching bag on HN. I do think it makes some sense though, because a fair number of people on here are trying to build things that disrupt large companies and they would have a natural interest in pointing out their flaws.
I feel like I've been seeing this for a while, a couple of months I think (TBH I am not very sure). It's been nice to see be able to skip to the result I used before.
1. YouTube just worked, it relied on Flash and that was installed on almost every computer. IIRC google video required some other plugin and it didn’t work great.
2. There was a lot more content to watch, probably because they were less good at filtering copyrighted content.