Thanks to Jason Scott, found of TEXTFILES.COM for this tweet about the Web:
The 30 year history of the World Wide Web seems to be one of barely glomming together a relatively robust, relatively well maintained set of information sources and then destroying them at the first sign of a company offering a slicker product.. which then spectacularly dies
Moral of the story: be in charge of your own Web preservation and don’t rely on multi-billion dollar corporations to do it for you.