How many websites back then would be youtube channels, podcasts or social media accounts if they had existed back then?

Nowadays most sites survive via traffic from google, if it goes away then most of those sites go away as well.

1. They were a major site that was an initial starting point for traffic

2. Search engines pointed to them and people could locate them.

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That was all a long time ago. Now people tend to go to a few 'all in one sites'. Google, reddit, '$big social media'. Other than Google most of those places optimize you to stay on that particular site rather than go to other people's content. The 'web' was a web of interconnectedness. Now it's more like a singularity. Once you pass the event horizon of their domain you can never escape again.