You do need to keep your computer always[0] on, though. I don't mind depending on external companies, I mind depending on external companies that I can't pay to ensure their loyalty to me.
- Beaker, like any decentralized web thingy, allows visitors to re-share content if they wish to do so. Integrity is provided through the crypto bits
- There is of course the possibility to ask a third-party such as Hashbase (https://hashbase.io/) to host content for you. The difference with WWW hosting is that you don't depend on them to serve content at all times, only when you or your visitors can't; you aren't as dependent
Beyond self-hosting, the major differentiator is that the "web" goes further than just interlinking, it also contains safe distribution. Beaker does even more: foreign content is typically accessed through "mounting" other sites, just like you'd mount with FUSE, so an application doesn't really care where the content comes from. It's all files in the same virtual filesystem.
It can be cheaper to host own (desktop-grade) hardware instead of paying someone to host a stupid single website. The calculation is easy, especially if you only take into account electricity and not hardware purchase costs:
Monthly costs per watt are around 0,3EUR/kWh * 24h/d * 30d/m/1000 = 0,2EUR. That's roughly the price tag for keeping a raspberry pi on 24/7 (yes, it's below 0,2EUR/month). For an average desktop/laptop, which will consume way less then 30W in idle, it's 6 EUR/month. The price of an average hosting offer.
Agree.. I ran a home-hosted web site with regular traffic on a Raspberry Pi 2B for a couple of years before upgrading it to a Pi 3. If you get power issues you can always switch to a battery power bank for a while (assuming your router doesn't go down at the same time).
[0] For varying values of "always".