Gopher

The information search program Gopher was developed in 1991 by the University of Minnesota/Minneapolis and spread very quickly on the Internet thanks to its extremely simple user interface.

Every Internet system that offers a Gopher service structures all information in the form of hierarchically nested selection menus, the Gopher menus. If one logs into Gopher, then one can search the file ranges existing on the system concerned by selection of the individual nested tables of contents. For downloading a file this must be marked only.

The advantages of Gopher lie where document or archive titles are searched.

The search is supported by the Gopher Subject tree, a list of Gopher servers arranged according to topics. With the help of this list one can search to some extent for certain information. One selects the desired subject area and receives a list of servers specialized in this area indicated.