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The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK

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"When Berners-Lee and his team were building the world wide web and designing HTTP and HTMP standards, they included error codes such as ‘500: internal server error’, or ‘404: page not found’. In the early 90s, they were trying to realise Licklider’s vision and setting out the rules for how we were all going to interact over this information network. One long-standing error code is ‘402: payment required’. The original intention – the reason 402 is reserved for future use – was that this code would be used to transact digital cash or micropayments. It has never been implemented – and the Collisons argue this is the reason tech is turning from an equal access opportunity to an oligopoly controlled by five companies now worth more than $3 trillion."

From "The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK".

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