Seems you missed the "big web revolution" between 2000 and now. Corporate/school/uni firewall madness filters everything but http(s), so each and every protocol

Seems you missed the "big web revolution" between 2000 and now. Corporate/school/uni firewall madness filters everything but http(s), so each and every protocol has to be somehow http(s). That is why there are almost exclusively webmail providers anymore. Why stuff like videoconferencing must be http-based. Why we do everything by emulating better protocols via polling a webserver for xml or json responses. Yes, it is insane.