"Gopher" was a program developed at the University Of Minnesota, to turn the files on the Internet into a point and click application for browsing these files. It had a hierarchy menu system in which it categorized files. It did not have the popular search feature which you would see on all of today's web browsers, but the format did make the Internet far more accessible to new users. That same year, the first hyper text post was made on the internet, this new format allowed users to combine pictures and text and even audio in a universal language to be posted on to internet sites.
In 1993 the first web browsers with a graphical interface were introduced. "Mosaic" was the first graphical web browser, It allowed text, graphics, sounds and other multimedia to be viewed in one document. This revolutionized the Internet and brought its potential to the attention of the rest of the world.
By 1994 the Internet was seeing an annual growth rate of over 300% (Life On The Internet, 2000.) There were many new uses for the interconnectivity. While E-mail became a new way to send a letter or short note, and keep relative and friends in touch, E-commerce was also taking off. The ability to accept encrypted data such as credit card information was allowing existing business and new businesses alike to flourish on the Internet. The companies behind the Internet revolution also experienced unheard of growth financially as well as from a historical relevancy stand point. Companies behind the growth of the internet are now fortune 500 companies that did not exist 10 to 20 years ago, with what others thought were business plans sure to fail at the time. .
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The Internet and Business.
E-commerce is the act of exchanging money on the Internet. Popular E-commerce sites sell everything from books to apparel to sporting goods. Many established companies used the 1990's to place their products on the web to reach more consumers.
