Loup, I agree that the Web is a mess. The original sin was to assume that people would only want to connect to other computers in order to retrieve a limited set of static documents. I think the reason for this was that everyone sticked to the Unix security model, where everything you run has all the permissions you have. That's why you don't want to run code from untrusted sources. If they had used a capablity-based security model from the start, this concern would probably not have arised.
Also, a deeper culprit, in my opinion, is Intellectual Property. There were several great networking protocols before the internet, but they were usually proprietary protocols for proprietary operatinog systems. Don't forget that, for instance, Plan9 was not open sourced until 2000 or 2002. Now there's a lot of talk of open standards, but there was a time when the main source of open standards were half-baked government projects. The main reason why the IBM PC architecture dominates is that Compaq managed to clone it legally. The main reason why Microsoft operating systems got to dominate is that they were ready from the start to run on those cheap and widespread IBM PC clones, both technically and legally. I also think that the internet, with its silly limited IP numbers and DNS servers smack of premature optimization. I mean, configuring a network feels a bit like programming in machine code. There's also the issue of one-way links, which creates the need for complex feedback mechanisms such as RSS, moreover, the fact that regular URLs are so ephemeral, which gave rise to permalinks. Then again, if it were all based on two-way links, maybe we would need a complex system for transparent anonymous linking, some kind of virtual link. That said, I don't see why you have an issue with search engines and search services. Even on your own machine, searching files with complex properties is far from trivial. When outside, untrusted sources are involved, you need someone to tell you what is relevant, what is not, who is lying, and so on. Google got to dominate that niche for the right reasons, namely, being much better than the competition. Best, -Martin
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