[a_p]

>What if the Web had been patented?

Then it would have ended up like Gopher[1]. In 1993, the University of Minnesota announced that it would start to charge license fees to use its implementation of the Gopher server. By 2000, when the university GPLed it, it was too late.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29

[wwweston]

> Then it would have ended up like Gopher

That's a decent guess, but I think it's also possible it would've followed the path of one of the pre-web online services like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, or eWorld. Those systems are what happens when somebody owns the marketplace and you need to get permission to set up shop, which (if the WWW took off at all) would more or less have been the state of things while the patents lasted.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the realm of the app store in some ways.

[tomkin]

Funny. I think I just realized that Facebook has become AOL – keywords and all.

[jacques_chester]

I remember when movie trailers had AOL keywords in them. Now it's "Like Action Drivel on Facebook!"

[gertef]

server != protocol

[SoftwareMaven]

It does when you are trying to get traction, especially if you have competition in both the protocol and implementation spaces.

[derleth]

Original Web browsers were capable of using Gopher in a graphical way; in fact, being cross-protocol like that was a big deal in the early days, back when a lot of Universities had substantial amounts of information on Gopher servers and indexed by search software like Veronica and Jughead. (Easy access to FTP was a big deal, too, but FTP hasn't disappeared to the extent Gopher has, so it kind of still is.)

http://www.netlingo.com/more/gopher.php