What works for whom? Every place I go on the internet where technical people discuss things, there's a common thread: competing interests have incentivized companies to put user needs second and it has resulted in a broken web that does not work and does not serve the users. The most cynical of us say that the web is irreparable.

It seems to me, from a user perspective, that they haven't found what works at all. It also seems to me that they don't care about finding what works anymore, they're happy to rest on their megalithic laurels the way Blockbuster and Radio Shack thought they could ad infinitum.

I think you're right about novel features and things breaking for no good reason, and I think the next phase in innovation of communication and networking technologies are already beginning to adopt some new axioms: less is more, and the idea that there will be one place to do everything online is flawed and cannot be achieved.