[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

[Dave Crocker]

On 12/22/2025 7:21 PM, John Levine via Internet-history wrote:
> Gopher might have been a serious competitor if UofM hadn't made the
> fatal mistake of trying to charge for it.


Gopher was markedly easier to start publishing with, but had a very 
constrained experience model.


1. As I recall, it was text only, with no extensible object potential.  
I didn't look at the protocol, so I don't know whether it had a 
provision for alternative object types.

2. My understanding was that while gopher supported a directed graph 
access, it did not enable display of content until reaching the leaf.  
The web permits output of content anywhere along a sequence.  This is 
not a trivial benefit, in terms of UX.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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