Netscape's original business model was selling Navigator. That didn't work for various reasons, like IE being given away for free. So then they switched to ser

Netscape's original business model was selling Navigator. That didn't work for various reasons, like IE being given away for free. So then they switched to server side products. But there wasn't enough depth there, and there were also free web servers, so they couldn't create enough value to both pay for server development and the browser, so they went under. Then MS came along. The browser was undermining their paid-for product, not generating revenue. So IE "went under" (was destaffed). Then AOL came along. For unclear reasons they bought Mozilla and paid for development for a long time, probably losing all their money. They eventually went under. Then Apple came along. They needed a browser of their own because they didn't want to depend on IE any more. But beyond being able to browse the mobile web they didn't need much more than that. Apple has not gone under, but the web is clearly just a feature of their OS and to the extent it gets developed, it's to keep up with Chrome. Then Google came along. They saw what a disaster zone the browser market was, plagued by non-existent or directly contradictory business models, and they feared Microsoft crushing them above all else, just like they'd done for Netscape. So they started paying browser makers to set them as the default, and wrote the Toolbar, and eventually graduated to making their own browser from scratch. AdWords is the closest thing the web ever had to an actual business model. It's reasonable that the people funding Gopher didn't see any commercial future in it, especially as Gopher had search integrated into the protocol. Even Google tried to sell themselves to Yahoo for $1M early on, and were rebuffed, because clearly web stuff wasn't worth that much.