Late 90s / early 00s were great. It was like the wild west, except that everyone had access to everything and you only had to look and search for long enough. Also, everyone could run their own website: sure, most people created shit, since they didn't knew how to make one. But you could also come up with incredibly creative jewels. Japanese sites are still like that, and I love them for it... sometimes I see a lot of incredible special effects there.
Media was however a lot more difficult to find, and even harder to find in high quality. This is one thing that has vastly improved on the net today, so much that the old internet could not even compare. Sure, I have fond memories of Audiogalaxy, but they never had a fraction of the quality and organization that
what.cd has today.