There was a whole gaggle of people who refused to get it for that and a few other "user friendliness" reasons. And I completely understand it.

>Across all groups of users, taking too long to download pages (i.e. "speed") is the most commonly experienced problem with the web (64.8% of respondents).

>Online retailers especially should take note: 53% of respondents reported that they had left a web site while searching for product information simply because the site was too slow.[1]

It's strange to think about now but roughly half of people in the US didn't have internet in the year 2000. And half of people that had the internet weren't making any purchases. People didn't trust or see much use for the tech back then and it was really hard to convince them.

[1]https://sites.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/...