Spotted this post by @steve@s.yelvington.com about how the Web wins over something proprietary:
Bit of online history:
Ziff-Davis was a publisher of magazines, mostly about photography, then computers when they came along. They ran some groups on CompuServe and other pre-Internet online services.
Recognizing that online experiences would be the Next Big Thing, and also having learned that the existing options like Prodigy sucked, Z-D embarked on a huge project to invent something new. …