That always blows my mind.
I was a teenager back then and it all happened so gradually I didn't understand until later what I had witnessed. (Then came some dark years of webspam before Google. Web rings were a good way of navigating. : )
I guess other people made mistakes. MS didn't think the Internet was important early enough; they didn't make Encarta available sensibly; MS was deeply unpopular with a sizable section of the population.
Other people got stuck in a reference library mode - and thus they concentrated on selling DVDs to libraries rather than making access public.
I will, grudgingly[1], admit that Wikipedia is amazing. Probably a Wonder of the World.
[1] I actually hate it, and try to avoid it where possible. If I had the money I'd fork it and create a lower-cruft, more accurate, closed for edits, version. Every article would have a 3 sentence 'elevator pitch' style introduction. Sourcing would be fixed. And the focus would be on "accurate", not "verifiable".
Unsolvable?
You aren't allowed to fly them at night, or over any populated area. They can't have more than a single seat. They have severe weight restrictions that mean you can't take much in them besides yourself. (Note: the previous few sentences describe the US regulations; other jurisdictions are different but all have similar kinds of restriction.) You can only travel to and from places that have a substantial length of runway for takeoff and landing.
Do you really find it difficult to imagine why someone might not find an ultralight aircraft a suitable replacement for their car?
Simple way of phrasing it, you cannot fall off the earth, you can fall out of the sky.