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Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share

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On 2016-01-25, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, Rich wrote:
>>   Gopher client. But the current technological situation was not
>>   inevitable. The superiority of the early text-based Web over its
>>   Gopherspace contemporary was by no means obvious.
>>
> McGill University kept using gopher until relatively late, though now
> I can't remember when "late" was. They had classified ads for students
> and faculty, and it used gopher.  I think it was still in place in
> 2001, when I found an ad for a used computer that I bought.  For "a
> long time" I was able to say "but McGill has a gopher" whenever gopher
> came up, but I can't remember when they moved to webpages for this.
>
> Those classified ads seemed to work better with the gopher than as web
> pages, but that may be other factors coming in, like more venues to
> sell things.
>
>    Michael

Gopherspace is still out there, for those who care to look, and it
offers simplicity and organization, a total lack of banner ads, stats
scripts, javascript madness, and 3rd party cookies.

Not hard to understand how ASCII porn failed to compete with other
mediums though, or how U. Minn's tight-fisted grip on its software
turned developers to other technologies. 

Still, gopher is very much alive.  Check out comp.infosystems.gopher for
more - this article was discussed there as well.  As users get fed up
with the risks and complications of the modern WWW's obese webpages,
gopher remains a parallel universe, much like Usenet.

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Thread

Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-01-25 06:00 +0000
  Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-25 10:55 -0500
    Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-01-28 10:32 +0000
      Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2016-01-28 10:45 +0000
        Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-01-28 13:41 +0200
        Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Whiskers <catwheezel@operamail.com> - 2016-01-28 12:56 +0000
          Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2016-01-28 12:59 +0000
            Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share RS Wood <rswood@therandymon.com> - 2016-01-28 22:02 +0300
              Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2016-01-28 19:31 +0000
              Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-01-28 20:41 +0000
                Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2016-01-30 11:00 +0300
                Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-30 11:12 -0500
          Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2016-01-28 19:26 +0000
        Re: Where Have all the Gophers Gone? Why the Web beat Gopher in the Battle for Protocol Mind Share Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-28 11:58 -0500

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