CD-ROMs weren't really a competitor to the Internet, they were in consumer hands before many people even got on the Internet. Home PCs shipped with copies of En

CD-ROMs weren't really a competitor to the Internet, they were in consumer hands before many people even got on the Internet. Home PCs shipped with copies of Encarta or Groliers before they came standard with modems. It was more the Internet started to compete with the breadth and size of the content people would find on their CDs. If you went to computer expos in the 90s there would always be people with tables covered in discs filled with different content. Everything from whole copies of BBSes to public FTPs to random collections of fonts and stock photos. For many people that sort of stuff was more accessible via CD-ROM than the Internet.