Internet service

We can't move over to less popular sites featuring photo-sharing or document sharing, or make a passing nod to the websites that have vanished, until we have sorted out what this Internet services and products means. The Storage News thinks it means Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which is closer than those sites who think from the search terms used that we're looking for the most popular products and services being offered on the Internet.

Gmail proved to be a good service and has stayed. An overview of Internet services from Spring semester, 1996 reveals the following:

• Email (Electronic mail)
• Telnet
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
• Archie
• Usenet
• Gopher
• Veronica
• WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers)
• World Wide Web

A lot can change in twenty years, especially in cyberspace. My searches for Archie and Veronica, Gopher, Usenet and Telnet suggest these are foundling services that have since been supplanted. Back then they said WWW was another part of the Internet, not synonymous with it, but I think it has very much taken the lead.
You can see at the ten year mark how changes in technology affect pattern of useage. Most of the hurrahs are reserved for improvement in speed.

Again it is hard to get a measure of the popularity or importance of Internet products when too often this is read to mean 'products sold on the Internet'. It took me a bit of digging before I could find a site that would tell me what was truly meant by an Internet product.