> The internet did not have to overcome network effects in the same way that cryptocurrency has.
It's hard to imagine how one could define the growth of the Internet as anything other than network effects - its value to end users has always been a function of how many end users there are, which is literally the definition of a network effect.
Edit: To expand a little, considering I don't know if you were aware of the early/mid 1990s, but in those days most people didn't have a computer at home, and in many places phone calls were charged per-minute. It was a significant thing to buy a PC and learn how to use it and pay a lot to go online.
It's hard to imagine how one could define the growth of the Internet as anything other than network effects - its value to end users has always been a function of how many end users there are, which is literally the definition of a network effect.
Edit: To expand a little, considering I don't know if you were aware of the early/mid 1990s, but in those days most people didn't have a computer at home, and in many places phone calls were charged per-minute. It was a significant thing to buy a PC and learn how to use it and pay a lot to go online.