If you haven't noticed, much of what's available on the Internet today involves working through some kind of company or service that you have to subscribe to and have membership with. If you don't, then you don't get to access their services. The major search engines were the first to go in this direction, seeing very early on the power of being the primary gateway to the Internet. Most people today think that was Yahoo or Google, but in reality it was companies likes America Online and Netscape as well as Alta Vista (yep, we're going down the time tunnel with those names).
Own the Gateway, Own the Net
Companies aren't stupid; they are extreme students of human behavior, especially in terms of how it can be controlled and more importantly, monetized. After all, companies are in the business of making a profit. They don't do things out of charity. That might seem to be the case at launch, but the startup expenses are being paid for by venture capitalist and early investors. Then it shifts over to other channels, such as charging fees up front or requiring use and resale of people's data in trade for their access (far more common). The key factor in why this works is that people are lazy.
The high majority of people don't want to learn how to build their own server, develop their own connections, and run their own pages and channels to the Internet. They would prefer to use someone else's package that is already packaged, built and ready to go. Consumerism in play here.
However, in a field where there can be lots of competitors, big companies can't sustain their operations and cost unless they have a large share of the market to keep adding on fees. As a result, the goal then is to not only capture customers but retain them so that they can't go anywhere else. Unique and proprietary services become attractive and only available to members willing to pay for their access. Others are left in the cold. This doesn't seem like much of at threat until the given company becomes the standard tool to use in an industry. We see that today with Microsoft's Office 365, Google, Adobe and so on.
There is Hope (If You Want It)
Interestingly, no matter how hard these large companies try to channel everyone into one box, their very architecture makes it possible to breakout and be independent. The very nature of the underlying network technology predominantly uses Unix-based systems. For the average consumer, that's Linux. Even better, much of what's available in the Linux world is practically free. You can download all the critical tools and then some into a Linux OS machine and set up your own Internet connections, completely free of any big party membership. That includes, web, email, server builds, web building and more. But it does take some effort. Linux and related tools are not entirely user-friendly. They are a lot better than 20 years ago, but the real meat and potatoes still requires an understanding of how to script in Linux as well as in various related environments like Python, HTML and JavaScript as well as PHP and SQL. If you can find the time to learn these at a basic level, a whole world free of the big companies opens up for you. Even better, there's no membership fees, no subscription costs, and you have full ownership of what you build.
Why does the above matter so much? If you're the type that truly believes being independent is far more than a convenience, that it prevents corporate monopolies from controlling everything about daily life, they you should be a supporter of always finding independent ways to access and use the Internet as well. Remember, the original purpose of the Net was not for freedom of information; it was for a decentralized communication tool the military could use in a time of a war. Government and corporations never have the individual's best interests at heart, but that doesn't mean that you can't create your own frontier when the tools to do so are available. Learn, build, and remove contingency on corporations.
