That web still exists. Even though it has been eclipsed by the siloized monstrous goos, those independent, quirky, greenfield sites are still very much alive.
Maybe it’s more like Rome being surrounded by hundreds of miles of malls, and parking lots, and highways, and those highways (and Google Maps) only leading you to those parking lots and malls. You’d have to stumble upon a backroad that’s not on the map to find the old Rome.
Just like it was back then... There was a very steep path for the entrance to he^W the Internet, and then it was easy to find those places. Now you can access the Internet easily but it's harder to find those places.
EDIT: typo
Some of these sites will never see SSL, and so they are indeed as roads not on a map.
(It isn't relevant how easy or hard ssl and obtaining certs are. The reality is, these older, static html sires sometimes don't have ssl, and will never have ssl.)
Attention is limited though and that has shifted away from websites like this so maybe it's gentrification of attention
Not disagreeing with you. It's just the modern web is a trap. A game you will lose, as your attention is abused, misdirected and monetized.
It looks as if it's "not zero sum" because a random user can supposedly check out anything on equal footing, whether it's Facebook.com or some guy's hobby personal website. They're both there and available.
But in reality that's never the case. A person taken at random is never equally likely to visit this or that (except in the sense: I have 50%-50% chances of winning the lottery today: I either win, or I don't). The gentrified one's would have way more exposure, be promoted as way more essential (socially, and even professionally) to be on them, they will have all the trappings of fashion, like modern design, mobile client apps, and such.
Back in 1999 that wasn't yet the case. At least nowhere near to the degree it is today.
This is reflected in viewership numbers of course, where a gentrified behemoth might get 99% of the traffic, and the rest long tail 1%, despite consisting of billion times more websites.
I do have a website since last century and I stopped posting on FB since a few years ago. My website gets negligible traffic except scan bots but still more than me on FB. If people google me they might find me on FB and realize that my page is dead. If they insist they'll find my site.
The empire never ended.
—PK Dick.