$20 Amazon Prime hike won't scare off customers - David Gilinsky

Amazon's raising price of a Prime subscription. Existing customers are annoyed, but it's not enough to drive them away.

Customers are grumbling about the Amazon Prime price hike on social media, but most still seem willing for fork over the cash.

On Thursday, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) followed through with its plans to raise the price of its Prime subscription from $79 to $99 a year. Despite the increase, existing customers still feel like $99 is a good deal for unlimited two-day shipping, Kindle downloads and access to streaming videos.

Brad Sanders is a typical example of a Prime customer who gets a lot of bang for his bucks. He orders lots of small packages to his home in Conway, Ark., and they usually arrive in two days. He recently had a 40-pound bag of dog food shipped as well, along with a 16-foot trampoline. The shipping cost of the dog food alone would have been $28. The trampoline? Even more than that.

"If you actually use Amazon Prime and drop it over $20 you're not understanding its real value," Sanders said.

Related story: 5 alternatives to Amazon Prime

That's the trick to using Prime. Use it enough, and it pays for itself quickly, especially if packages are large or heavy.

The extra features help too. Sam Henry is a tech entrepreneur in Baltimore, who's been using Prime for three years, While he admits Amazon has a disappointingly limited selection of free shows and movies, it's been a good option ever since he quit paying for cable television.

"When I combine those two -- free shipping and instant video -- that's what makes it still worth it to me," Henry said.

What Amazon has to worry about are the people who haven't yet given a Prime subscription a chance. There's suddenly a much higher wall to leap over.

 

Netflix vs. Amazon Ad War

Shane Stephens in Decatur, Ark., was considering a Prime subscription just this week. He enjoyed the free one-month trial period and was impressed by the fast delivery. Even then, $79 seemed a bit much. He's the sole earner with a wife and four kids, and every dollar counts.

Locking himself into a one-year $99 contract makes even less sense, especially when he's had a positive experience making the occasional online order from Wal-Mart (WMT,Fortune 500).

"If I have other options and can wait an additional day, then Prime is not worth it," Stephens said.

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Amazon did what it could to soften the blow. The company made the intelligent move of announcing a potential $40 price hike last month, only to follow through with a $20 increase instead.

Noelle Seybert, from Los Angeles, Calif., thinks higher subscription fees have been long overdue. Amazon's delivery speed, product selection and additional services have continuously improved in the past nine years, but the cost of Prime has held steady.

Seybert said the service is better -- and more adaptive to her lifestyle -- than ever before. Amazon's new fulfillment centers means that sometimes she gets packages the next day, instead of waiting for two. And as a corporate training consultant who frequently travels, she addicted to ordering on the go.

For example, she recently found herself waiting for a flight at LAX when she realized she'd forgotten to pack any snacks that abide by her gluten allergy. She pulled out her smartphone, ordered a pack of thinkThin chocolate peanut butter bars and had them sent to her hotel in Austin. It was there when she arrived.

"It beat me there. It blew my mind," she said.

Of course, not everyone can be satisfied.

"The only Prime I'm happy with is Optimus," said Joric Ditan of Caln Township, Pa.

Tim Berners-Lee: The Web needs its freedom - David Gilinsky

The World Wide Web turns 25

         Today is a landmark anniversary for Tim Berners-Lee. In March 1989 he wrote a proposal to his employers at CERN for a somewhat abstract "global hypertext" system he called Mesh. A year later he re-named that system the World Wide Web. It caught on. Labs explores the latest innovations around the world to showcase cutting-edge designs and groundbreaking research in science and technology.

A quarter of a century later, Berners-Lee is like a proud father, seeing his baby all grown up and making its way in the world without him.

"I feel a certain amount of inventor's pride," he tells CNN. "My greatest pride has been the spirit of collaboration we've had for the last 25 years."

He's watched the Web grow through a carefree childhood and turbulent adolescence, reaching the kind of age when things suddenly get more serious, and it's time to make some important decisions about the future.

"At 25 it's more like a young adult," he explains. "Suddenly it needs its independence; young adults are at the stage when they're looking for freedom, and in terms of what they do they're asserting their rights.

When (systems) break the whistle blower is the person who saves society by pointing out something that nobody else will.
Tim Berners Lee

"Now, 25 years on, Web users are realizing they need human rights on the Web ... We need independence of the Web for democracy, we need independence of the Web to be able to support the press, we need independence of the Web in general. It's becoming very important to sort out all that."

Recent years have been marked by growing pains. Revelations of mass surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have caused international outrage. Argumentsover net neutrality persist and copyright wars pitching open-net activists against mainstream creative industries have grown bitter, with Berners-Lee himself criticized at times. The stock and use of illicit material has grown with the dark net.

Berners-Lee is clear that our ability to speak and associate freely is under threat. The widespread data gathering of the NSA revealed a "broken" system, he believes, and he praises whistle blowers like Edward Snowden whose leaks expose the excesses.

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"When (systems) break the whistle blower is the person who saves society by pointing out something that nobody else will, because it's illegal," he says. "One thing I'd like to see built in the future is an international convention and international respect for whistle blowers."

Read: Edward Snowden: I'd do it again

If spying is one threat, Berners Lee believes censorship is another. He recalls the situation in Egypt, where theIn ternet was cut off at the height of anti-government protests in January 2011. "For a lot of people that was the first time they realized you could turn it off, and they asked themselves, who could turn it off for me?" he says, adding that "turning off the Internet is more or less a signal that the regime does not trust its citizens and that the regime is on the way out."

At 58, Berners-Lee is not taking a back seat. Having invented the Web once, he hopes to re-invent it through the "Web We Want" initiative, aiming to create a universal "Internet Users Bill of Rights."

Key targets of the manifesto include spreading net access to the nearly two thirds of the world that still doesn't have it. Establishing clear regulations is also a priority, as is the protection of personal user information.

Read: The early Web: Slow, simple and sparse

Berners-Lee still enjoys enough power over his creation to make big changes realistic, through two authorities he founded and continues to lead. The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) determines standards for all Web infrastructure, backed by the world's leading academic institutions and software developers. The Web Foundation manages the spread and ethical application of the Web, bringing pressure to bear on governments through initiatives such as The Web Index, which ranks nations by Internet access standards.

There's an international spirit that ignores boundaries.
Tim Berners Lee

The Web We Want campaign will rely on mass mobilization across industries, nations and activist bodies to succeed, but Berners-Lee is confident of fostering a spirit of cooperation. He has seen it before and considers it the Web's greatest accomplishment.

"It's really a story of collaboration, people working painstakingly on getting protocols right ... There's an international spirit that ignores boundaries," he says.

As for what the Web will look like over the next 25 years, as it enters its middle age, Berners Lee sees a smarter Web emerging, with users empowered by the huge amounts of personal information collected as part of the "Web of data" -- information that could help personalize our Web experience.

"People are worrying about what other people are doing with their data," he says, "but they haven't realized what they can do with their own data."

As we grow more connected to, and reliant on, the Web, so the potential for abuse increases. How we use such a powerful tool amounts to a test of our species, says Berners-Lee, but it's one he is confident we can pass together.

"In general the Web enables humanity to be more powerful and that power can be used for good things and to do horrible things -- but on balance when it comes to humanity I'm a tremendous optimist."