They first made a brief splash here about four or five years ago, but there were only about a million Internet users in Taiwan back then. Surfing the Web was slow and the charges were expensive. First-generation Internet cafes soon disappeared from the scene, their meteoric rise and equally abrupt demise very reminiscent of the here-and-gone egg tart craze.
事實上，網咖並不是全新行業，四、五年前就吹過一陣流行風，但當時台灣上網人數只有一百多萬，連線速度慢、費用高，於是第一代網咖就像蛋撻店，迅速竄起又快速消失。