If anything it was so far ahead of the early web that it hindered adoption of the WWW in France. It was incredibly good and rich, many services that could be used by non-technical people and had a built in monetization system for information providers. It took at least until 1996 before the web could compete and by that time France reluctantly started to let go of their beloved tiny terminals. It took until 2012 (!!) before it was finally decommissioned, but by then there really wasn't much left of it to be turned off.
I was inspired by the Minitel to start Esurance in 1997. The Minitel of course had porn (more Craigslist type "offerings" from real people) but also reservations, travel, and...INSURANCE!
You are totally correct, it was so efficient that it delayed the adoption of the worldwide web. Of course France wanted something in FRENCH (!). As I was raising money in Europe for Esurance, the French executives would look down on me and say "we have the Minitel, we want nothing to do with your Internet" :-)
Not really. I worked for France Télécom's Wanadoo ISP division and the Minitel guys tried to sabotage us at every opportunity, including getting the head of our first division CEO Roger Courtois, but they did not manage to slow the progress, even though at the time they had $1B/year in revenues. The bigger hindrance was relatively low PC penetration compared to the UK, Netherlands or Germany.
Fun story: at the time TCP/IP did not ship standard with Windows, so we had to ship CD-ROMs with installers for WinSock, along with a browser (initially Netscape, then IE because it had much better provisioning tools, not because of Microsoft's dirty tricks though they certainly tried). My colleague who was responsible for this was clearly so traumatized he shortly later left the company and joined the Catholic priesthood...
And it solved a problem I’d argue the internet hasn’t solved yet: how to charge users securely, easily and for small amounts. The way it did that is through your phone bill, since the minitel was using your phone line. No credit card number to enter (and be hacked), no credentials to enter. Of course it also meant kids had access to it…
Because the phone network can't be hacked, perhaps? Also in my views, that something cannot be monetized is a feature, not a bug: trying to monetize WWW/email is precisely what led to the horrors we know today of mass advertisement and surveillance.
The first thing I did when we got a computer at home with a modem was... to login to the minitel with my computer via an emulator downloaded on the internet, because all the cool stuff was there !! Mostly french video game guides since I was 11 lol
Then, I'd ask the minitel site to send me by fax the doc I wanted to read and it would call me and print on fax via the same emulator lol
The next few months, EVERYTHING moved to the internet and this stopped being necessary, but it was kinda cool... and HORRIBLY expensive vs the internet.
> many services that could be used by non-technical people and had a built in monetization system for information providers
There's still a Minitel today: it's the Apple ecosystem.
Minitel demonstrated regular people were willing to buy services on a machine (phone, phone-like terminal, computer) and use it as part of their normal lives.
If you're familiar with french language, some people argued that most of the "Internet" we use today is in fact technically, politically and economically closer to the Minitel. I'm of course refering to Benjaming Bayart's "Internet Libre ou Minitel 2.0" conference from 2008 which gave birth to the non-profit ISP federation (FFDN).
Why singleout apple, when our lives are surrounded by digital subscriptions from a lot of other companies too? Office, Netflix, Youtube Premium, Spotify, Blackblaze etc, etc...
I still think it's better for the average people. It's also frugal oriented. You won't have youtube or google maps but for simple searches or orders I think it was peak. Just give it a speed bump and you're good.
Actually it was similar in Germany with BTX. But also during the time where it was reasonably usable (~'96) it was way faster and cheaper than going on the Internet. BTX was shut down in 2007 though
I own two Minitels. I made a connector (https://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361) that allows me to use one as a serial terminal and it works nicely with a Raspberry Pi/stty. I am in the process of writing my own firmware for the other one.
One of my Minitels acting as a terminal over a serial cable I made... displaying jgc.org via Lynx: https://imgur.com/a/ecmvfMj
It ran on V.23, which was 1200 bits/s down and 75 bits/s up, but could be reversed in case one wanted to upload / type stuff.
Once modems were widespread, it was a lot better to use Minitel emulators on a computer, as one could record and replay sessions after disconnection—a key aspect since most Minitel numbers were billed at premium rates, to allow services to be monetized.
I remember being nearly murdered by my parents after they received the phone bill via the (physical, paper-based in those days :-) ) mail.
The minitel promptly was locked out of reach of the family's children ....
For context for "36.15": you would access Minitel services by typing a numeric code followed by a short textual name, the most common code being 3615.
Advertisements for Minitel services would say something like "Dial 3615 HOTSTUFF to meet a passionate lover". A lot of these services were adult chat, games, or extremely low-res porn, and it was easy to rack up a massive phone bill by connecting to them (you'd have to remember to disconnect, too!). Another very common use cases was phone book lookups.
Think of it as a physical terminal for a ncurses-style terminal app using a remote client, with the display updating line by line with a scanning cursor as you received data. There's an example of what that looked like in this short documentary about Minitel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlUmxUB9RhI&t=500s – every single page loaded line by line that way.
More precisely, the minitel would call 36 15, which would open a page on which you type the short textual name and press enter, which would then connect you to the service you want. And the terminal would tell you the cost per minute of the service.
At this point, Minitel has become kind of Rorschachtest for france, some see forward engineering, some see decline, some bureaucracy... What's great, is one can project almost anything on it.
Was it not all of those things? I mean it certainly took great engineering to build a such network, and at the same time placing all computing/resources in the center ensured its decline, an approach which is typical of french engineering from higher schools bureaucrats.
In Italy, the same service was called Videotel[0] and the terminals were sold by the state-owned phone company, Sip. there was a model where the keyboard would slide out from under the CRT screen[1], and another model where the hinged keyboard would fold onto the screen (similar to a laptop keyboard, except in this case it's the keyboard that folds up, not the screen that folds down)[2].
I remember in my area some pubs had these, they were on the tables and you could use them while you were there, it was the first time in my life that I was chatting with someone on the other side of the globe. (I had tried visiting some of the popular BBS on my Amiga to look at cool stuff but had never actually exchanged messages with anyone online). It was cool because you could talk to perfect strangers but sometimes the discussion would go deep. I remember I was so excited about it and my friends were too. I think in the modern Internet we don't really have something like that.
IRC chatrooms, PUBNIXes and forums are alive and well. Just because half the Internet has moved to Facebook/Discord and uploaded a profile picture doesn't mean you can't have profound pseudonymous communications with random people on the other side of the globe anymore.
Let's not forget that Minitel couldn't be as great as it was if not for its complete and utter centralization.
Sometimes having twenty slightly different services that are blocked from interoperating for the sake of some abstract notion of privacy isn't that great after all.
It was not, in fact, totally centralized. In the early 90s, my middle school had a server that you could phone into to get the weather (I don't quite remember if it was a full forecast or not, I think it was), and that server was managed by a Maths teacher and students who would enter the school ½h/1h earlier to grab the data and update the page. I guess you could say that was my first experience as what would later be called webmastering.
It was still centralized in the sense that you had to connect to a server because a Minitel had no computing and no storage (so no p2p). Benjamin Bayart's "Internet libre ou Minitel 2.0?" goes to great length to explain the consequences of that.
Minitel was probably subject to substantial government regulation, unlike the "tech" companies that dominate the web and overinfluence the internet. Minitel was probably funded at least in part through taxation.
Certainly, Minitel was not a secretive Silicon Valley-styled company with dual class shares or other entrenching governance structures, that allow for concentration of voting power in the hands of company insiders, through disproportionate allocation of voting rights among shareholders.
It seems the French do not have the same hatred of telecom that Amercians do.
Regardless of the public opinion toward telecom, it has historically been subject to far more regulation than so-called "tech" companies operating websites. Sadly, some of today's telecom companies try to emulate or piggyback on the privacy violating behaviour of "Big Tech".
Centralisation/decentralisation is an interesting debate, but if the issue is privacy then, IMO, one also needs to consider the question of regulation/deregulation.
Perhaps Minitel was an example of a regulated, government-supported public computer networking service that worked very well.
Silicon Valley and its charlatan ideology is a privacy disaster. It is probably a threat to the survival of democratic societies as we know them.
> It seems the French do not have the same hatred of telecom that Amercians do.
Oh yes we do. France Telecom back in the day wasn't all that bad, but the prices were crazy: copper is expensive but not so much that you should pay every month dozens of francs (before the euro, don't remember the exact number) without even paying for usage. But at least from what i remember tech support and intervention times were decent before the Internet, then came Wanadoo and then the privatization of France Télécom into Orange and now we have shitty service like everyone else.
Readit News
Fun story: at the time TCP/IP did not ship standard with Windows, so we had to ship CD-ROMs with installers for WinSock, along with a browser (initially Netscape, then IE because it had much better provisioning tools, not because of Microsoft's dirty tricks though they certainly tried). My colleague who was responsible for this was clearly so traumatized he shortly later left the company and joined the Catholic priesthood...
Wasn't that, in part, due to the fact that many people in France already had a Minitel at home?
but that was the same for all countries
I had the painful job of getting Windows running with netware ie IPX also with TCP/IP
1 - I've written about this here https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web-monetizati... and it was widely, if mostly negatively, discussed on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857
Then, I'd ask the minitel site to send me by fax the doc I wanted to read and it would call me and print on fax via the same emulator lol
The next few months, EVERYTHING moved to the internet and this stopped being necessary, but it was kinda cool... and HORRIBLY expensive vs the internet.
There's still a Minitel today: it's the Apple ecosystem.
Minitel demonstrated regular people were willing to buy services on a machine (phone, phone-like terminal, computer) and use it as part of their normal lives.
One of my Minitels acting as a terminal over a serial cable I made... displaying jgc.org via Lynx: https://imgur.com/a/ecmvfMj
Once modems were widespread, it was a lot better to use Minitel emulators on a computer, as one could record and replay sessions after disconnection—a key aspect since most Minitel numbers were billed at premium rates, to allow services to be monetized.
</memories>
still, good days. They even had games!
36.15 ...
Advertisements for Minitel services would say something like "Dial 3615 HOTSTUFF to meet a passionate lover". A lot of these services were adult chat, games, or extremely low-res porn, and it was easy to rack up a massive phone bill by connecting to them (you'd have to remember to disconnect, too!). Another very common use cases was phone book lookups.
Think of it as a physical terminal for a ncurses-style terminal app using a remote client, with the display updating line by line with a scanning cursor as you received data. There's an example of what that looked like in this short documentary about Minitel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlUmxUB9RhI&t=500s – every single page loaded line by line that way.
Teenage wet fantasies and all that :-)
(disclosure, i'm french)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadly_Games_(film)
Now I’m curious if the Home Alone screenwriter watched it.
I remember in my area some pubs had these, they were on the tables and you could use them while you were there, it was the first time in my life that I was chatting with someone on the other side of the globe. (I had tried visiting some of the popular BBS on my Amiga to look at cool stuff but had never actually exchanged messages with anyone online). It was cool because you could talk to perfect strangers but sometimes the discussion would go deep. I remember I was so excited about it and my friends were too. I think in the modern Internet we don't really have something like that.
[0] (Italian Wikipedia) - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotel
[1] (picture) https://forum.telefonino.net/images_fotodb/pict001494862_7_1...
[2] (picture) https://i.ebayimg.com/00/z/3UcAAOSwT5RdB2AU/$_59.JPG
Sometimes having twenty slightly different services that are blocked from interoperating for the sake of some abstract notion of privacy isn't that great after all.
For some this is not some abstract notion but a real worry. I am glad the internet started decentralised.
Certainly, Minitel was not a secretive Silicon Valley-styled company with dual class shares or other entrenching governance structures, that allow for concentration of voting power in the hands of company insiders, through disproportionate allocation of voting rights among shareholders.
It seems the French do not have the same hatred of telecom that Amercians do.
Regardless of the public opinion toward telecom, it has historically been subject to far more regulation than so-called "tech" companies operating websites. Sadly, some of today's telecom companies try to emulate or piggyback on the privacy violating behaviour of "Big Tech".
Centralisation/decentralisation is an interesting debate, but if the issue is privacy then, IMO, one also needs to consider the question of regulation/deregulation.
Perhaps Minitel was an example of a regulated, government-supported public computer networking service that worked very well.
Silicon Valley and its charlatan ideology is a privacy disaster. It is probably a threat to the survival of democratic societies as we know them.
Oh yes we do. France Telecom back in the day wasn't all that bad, but the prices were crazy: copper is expensive but not so much that you should pay every month dozens of francs (before the euro, don't remember the exact number) without even paying for usage. But at least from what i remember tech support and intervention times were decent before the Internet, then came Wanadoo and then the privatization of France Télécom into Orange and now we have shitty service like everyone else.
What's abstract about it?