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I still maintain a gopher presence[1] as a mirror. Once it was determined that gopher could neither be monetized nor weaponized, it was doomed to obscurity. It is an open academic tool for open academic purposes. As an aside, I actually saw the initial announcement on USENET about CERN releasing something called a browser for something else they called the World Wide Web. I couldn't see the point since we already had gopher, veronica, jughead, et al. Absolutely prescient on my part...

[1]https://gopher.commons.host/gopher://gopher.club/1/users/eve...

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> Once it was determined that gopher could neither be monetized nor weaponized, it was doomed to obscurity.

This is a cynical rewriting of history. More likely, Gopher lost to HTTP due to a combination of random chance, network effects, and simply not being as user friendly to e.g. set up a server. HTTP was also an "open academic tool" for "open academic purposes". Only later, due to HTTP's success, was it monetized and "weaponized".

Perhaps. Gopher is simply a single, world-wide, hierarchical, indexed and searchable directory tree. Its sole means of transport is ftp. It can move all manner of formats about but only display ASCII text. The only thing resembling hyperlinks are the lowly gophermaps, one per directory. Gopher servers are small, simple and require few resources. Gopher clients are minuscule. Gopher with veronica is essentially a library card catalog that directs you to the proper stack and shelf to fulfill your query. And there is not a single commercial farthing to be made anywhere...

> It can move all manner of formats about but only display ASCII text. The only thing resembling hyperlinks are the lowly gophermaps, one per directory.

That’s the point you should be focusing on: it’s not a competitive user experience. The commercialization angle isn’t “no way to extract money” but “no users”.

I remember the era of BBSes, Fidonet, and then getting access to the internet. FTP was obviously useful. The web was extremely useful. Gopher was … “what’s the point?”

Gopher was designed for and by academia. It is simply a research tool. It is a way to post, find and retrieve textual data on a topic. It still does exactly what it was designed to do. That what it was designed to do is no longer relevant, given the web, is besides the point. It still functions as designed, much like the ed editor. And that it is now used almost exclusively by hobbyists trying to recreate an 80's dial-up BBS aura is also besides the point...

> This is a cynical rewriting of history.

Seconded. I was on the Internet before gopher, and I never really saw the point over regular ftp (and, a quick glance at the wikipedia page right now doesn't really tell me what the real extra value over ftp is).

Conversely, the web's value was immediately obvious.

Gopher was a menu-driven interface via ftp to search, find and download files for academics who weren't particularly computer savey. It also gave them a platform to publish their own research for others and have it indexed and searchable. It was never meant to be a popular format...

Well, I think popular in the context of Internet meant something different then as it does now. But yes, gopher seemed then just like 'nother service, while WWW was a revolution in the mid-nineties.

I remember, I think, connecting to the local library to access all of the above using a text/curses type interface on a 2400 bps modem borrowed from my high school. I'm thinking 1993ish?

The Portland, Oregon public library system offered this in the 1990s. You could dial in and get the library's own text-terminal catalog system, Gopher, or the Lynx browser. You could download files as well as browsing text. That's how I first started playing with ray tracers and downloading shareware games.

You could even quit the browser and you'd be sitting in a Unix shell account.

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