Mobile apps should have an equivalent. If you’re using a mobile app, let us know which one so people can give specific directions.

You’re thinking of CS Lewis. Now imagine if pre-early teen me asking this person about Neuromancer by Gibson. Their head would have exploded. One saving grace about my suburban bedroom town is that we had a good public library. If I wanted the good stuff, they either had it or could get it.

While we don’t like what these services have become, lots of people forget how bad comparative services were before these came along. Example: bookstores. Everyone dreams up some ideal bookstore that didn’t exist for the majority. Growing up, my local bookstore was run by a religious nut who refused to get Devil literature like Lord of the Rings. The good bookstores were in Ann Arbor, which was a 45 minute drive away. Chains like Borders, B&N, or web stores like Amazon were a huge positive change.

Not at all. They created a great browser, which is what us end users wanted, but they never achieved their ecosystem goals.

Not only that, they had goals beyond just a browser. They wanted to create a whole OS ecosystem integrated with the browser. They released Firefox as a side project to just get a browser in everyone’s hands while they worked on Mozilla. Turns out the OS ecosystem in a browser was a bust, and Firefox was a winner. Just the Mozilla devs haven’t stopped being bitter about it. The old Netscape motivations around the project have been a boat anchor.