Jun 282012
Alas, Minitel is no more. After 30 years of operation, France Telecom will shut down the venerable service this Saturday. While the proprietary, closed architecture of Minitel never caught on outside of France, this “made in France” solution reached nearly half the inhabitants of France in its heyday. Today, Minitel is largely irrelevant thanks to the Internet (this is what doomed other closed architecture commercial online services, such as CompuServe.) Still, if The New York Times is to be believed, at least some farmers are going to miss this reliable service.