To me, "The Internet" and "The Internet without short-form videos" are two different things.
There was a very short span of time when the mobile bandwidth was good enough for browsing, messaging, and corporate email, but not really good enough (or prohibitively expensive) for streaming. Feels like that was the sweet spot.
....yeah but then, they found out how to build & deliver mobile ADS & co, so bandwidth need exploded, bringing us to the "mobile web" we have today. E.g. including YT Ads popping up after 15 min in a meditation class :-D
There was a very short span of time when the mobile bandwidth was good enough for browsing, messaging, and corporate email, but not really good enough (or prohibitively expensive) for streaming. Feels like that was the sweet spot.