https://ils.unc.edu/callee/gopherpaper.htm

Gopher did succeed, we fully supported it in Mosaic. :-)

More fundamentally, Gopher was a hierarchy (tree) of information, whereas the web was freeform pages with arbitrary links. Users preferred the latter.

speak for yourself, I liked gopher better. JK

I always thought Gopher's downfall was because University of Minnesota started asking for licensing fees, while the web was free? https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://i.imgur.com/xKqU7e7.png