> The internet was so new, it wasn’t essential yet.
The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then, by another 12yo. And the Internet was essential, critically so, by 1995. It was the WWW that was new, about 2 years old.
The Internet wasn't new in 1995, by one measure 26yo by then, by another 12yo. And the Internet was essential, critically so, by 1995. It was the WWW that was new, about 2 years old.
Netscape was only a few months old at this point.
Another essential component was real IP access by the end user. Up to this point your options for home use were sandboxed "on-line" services, telnet/shell accounts, or static SLIP service for power users. It was dynamic PPP and the emergence of dial-up ISP's that made browsers like Netscape usable by the masses. This started to happen on a wide scale around 1994-1995.
RFC1661 (PPP) was not formalized until July 1994.
PPP must have rolled out really fast or went through a few beta periods. I remember using it as early as ‘93. Our ISP gave you the option of SLIP or PPP when you dialed in.
What about the NeXT WWW browser?
This is more of a side note response.
I often see a huge disconnect between those who lived during a period in question and those who read about history. I imagine that this transitory stage in computing was before your time.
More often than not, it's fascinating to see how... off, the readers of history are versus those who lived through the period. This, sometimes, becomes painfully clear when it is actual history for one generation but only a recent memory for another older generation.
It very much was not essential to the general public and it wasn't until the www made it easily accessible for commerce that it became essential to the general public. But you are absolutely correct that the internet itself wasn't new.
Connecting a Windows computer to the Internet with Winsock didn't happen until the early 90s.