Why does nothing work on the web?

Well, you’ve heard of a single point of failure, right? It’s when just one thing going wrong can cause everything to fail.

That is not the problem with the web.

It’s way worse than that.

On the web, there are single points of failure every step of the way.

The web is so complex – so many different things have to work together – that a small chance of any one of them failing adds up to a strong chance that things won’t work.

How did this happen?