Yes, in ancient history, video codecs sucked, browsers sucked, and the only way to play video was through plugins that sucked.

Now, all the browsers are pretty good at dealing with video, the codecs are hugely improved (although, there's some headaches with IP) and the plugin is dead.

Nobody ever actually wanted gifs. They want short, small videos that are guaranteed to work in their browser and that they can be pretty sure aren't going to have sound. We can now deliver that.