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Back in the '90s, folks were not sure if they could trust the Web, and frankly, a lot of the services back then didn't provide massive value.

When I hear people express extreme optimism about the Internet, I say, we've had it in mature form for about ten years. Macroeconomically speaking, those are about the worst 10 years we've had since about the 1930s. I don't blame the Internet for that - that would be ridiculous.

The fact of the matter is that the Internet has brought together millions of people who trust one another for reasons that are unknown.

I don't think many people anticipated how the Internet was going to revolutionize the way we disseminate information.

When I was born, the Internet was barely two years old. It was the preserve of academics, used to connect dozens rather than billions of users. There weren't many who predicted it would transform our world.

I happen to be one of the people who believe that the Internet is a force of good, and I'm very optimistic about it.

Around '93, '94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years.

The history of the Internet is not, as some people have tried to make it, a libertarian just-so story. It is a messy tale in which the government played a significant role. That role was, however, far more subtle than the plans of industrial policy gurus or techno-boosting politicians.

I'd always maintained that much of the anarchy and craziness of the early Internet had a lot to do with the fact that governments just hadn't realised it was there.

I am still cautiously hopeful about the potential of the Internet. But it seems that the greatest revolution in communication has been hijacked by commercial values.