[denton-scratch]

Back in the 80s, we used to draw network diagrams on the whiteboard; those parts of the network that belonged neither to us nor to our users was represented by an outline of a cloud. This cloud didn't provide storage or (useable) computing resource. If you pushed stuff in here, it came out there.

I think it was a reasonable analogy. You can't see inside it; you don't know how it works, and you don't need to. Note that at this time, 'the internet' wasn't the only way of joining heterogenous networks; there was also the OSI stack.

So I was annoyed when some bunch of kids who had never seen such whiteboard diagrams decided to re-purpose the term to refer to whatever piece of the internet they had decided to appropriate, fence-in and then rent out.