Editing NCSA Mosaic (section)

== Impact ==
Mosaic led to the [[Internet boom]] of the 1990s.<ref name="Architects of the Web"/>{{rp|xlii}} Other browsers existed during this period, such as [[Erwise]], [[ViolaWWW]], [[MidasWWW]], and [[tkWWW]], but did not have the same effect as Mosaic on public use of the Internet.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/www-history/|title=A Little History of the World Wide Web From 1960s to 1995|date=2001-05-05|access-date=2006-12-16|publisher=[[CERN]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071219114722/http://ref.web.cern.ch/ref/CERN/CNL/2001/001/www-history/|archive-date=2007-12-19|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In the October 1994 issue of ''Wired'' magazine, Gary Wolfe notes in the article titled "The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don't look now, but [[Prodigy (ISP)|Prodigy]], [[AOL]], and [[CompuServe]] are all suddenly obsolete – and Mosaic is well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface":

{{quote| text=When it comes to smashing a paradigm, pleasure is not the most important thing. It is the only thing. If this sounds wrong, consider Mosaic. Mosaic is the celebrated graphical "browser" that allows users to travel through the world of electronic information using a point-and-click interface. Mosaic's charming appearance encourages users to load their own documents onto the Net, including color photos, sound bites, video clips, and hypertext "links" to other documents. By following the links – click, and the linked document appears – you can travel through the online world along paths of whim and intuition. Mosaic is not the most direct way to find online information. Nor is it the most powerful. It is merely the most pleasurable way, and in the 18 months since it was released, Mosaic has incited a rush of excitement and commercial energy unprecedented in the history of the Net.<ref name="The Second Phase"/>}}

Reid also refers to Matthew K. Gray's website, [https://www.mit.edu/~mkgray/net/ Internet Statistics: Growth and Usage of the Web and the Internet], which indicates a dramatic leap in web use around the time of Mosaic's introduction.<ref name="Architects of the Web"/>{{rp|xxv}}

David Hudson concurs with Reid:

{{quote| text=Marc Andreessen's realization of Mosaic, based on the work of [[Tim Berners-Lee|Berners-Lee]] and the hypertext theorists before him, is generally recognized as the beginning of the web as it is now known. Mosaic, the first web browser to win over the Net masses, was released in 1993 and made freely accessible to the public. The adjective phenomenal, so often overused in this industry, is genuinely applicable to the... 'explosion' in the growth of the web after Mosaic appeared on the scene. Starting with next to nothing, the rates of the web growth (quoted in the press) hovering around tens of thousands of percent over ridiculously short periods of time were no real surprise.<ref name="Rewired">{{cite book |last=Hudson |first=David |title=Rewired: A Brief and Opinionated Net History |location=Indianapolis |publisher=Macmillan Technical Publishing |year=1997 |isbn=1-57870-003-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/rewired00huds }}</ref>{{rp|42}}}}

Ultimately, web browsers such as Mosaic became the ''[[killer application]]s'' of the 1990s. Web browsers were the first to bring a graphical interface to search tools the Internet's burgeoning wealth of distributed information services. A mid-1994 guide lists Mosaic alongside the traditional, text-oriented information search tools of the time, [[Archie search engine|Archie]] and [[Veronica (search engine)|Veronica]], [[Gopher (protocol)|Gopher]], and [[Wide area information server|WAIS]]<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lucey|first=Sean|title=Internet tools help navigate the busy virtual highway.|journal=MacWeek|date=9 May 1994|page=51}}</ref> but Mosaic quickly subsumed and displaced them all. Joseph Hardin, the director of the NCSA group within which Mosaic was developed, said downloads were up to 50,000 a month in mid-1994.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Levitt|first=Jason|title=A Matter of Attribution: Can't Forget to Give Credit for Mosaic Where Credit is Due|journal=Open Systems Today|date=9 May 1994|page=71}}</ref>

In November 1992, there were twenty-six websites in the world<ref>{{cite web|url=http://info.cern.ch/|title=home of the first website|access-date=2014-06-16}}</ref> and each one attracted attention. In its release year of 1993, Mosaic had a What's New page, and about one new link was being added per day. This was a time when access to the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous domain of academia and large industrial research institutions. Yet it was the availability of Mosaic and Mosaic-derived graphical browsers themselves that drove the explosive growth of the Web to over 10,000 sites by August 1995 and millions by 1998.<ref>[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/ Web Server Survey | Netcraft]. News.netcraft.com. Retrieved on 2014-06-16.</ref> Metcalfe expressed the pivotal role of Mosaic this way:

{{quote|
text=
In the Web's first generation, Tim Berners-Lee launched the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and HTML standards with prototype Unix-based servers and browsers. A few people noticed that the Web might be better than Gopher.

In the second generation, Marc Andreessen and [[Eric Bina]] developed NCSA Mosaic at the University of Illinois. Several million then suddenly noticed that the Web might be better than sex.

In the third generation, Andreessen and Bina left NCSA to found Netscape...
|source= Bob Metcalfe<ref>{{cite magazine | magazine=[[InfoWorld]] |title=InfoWorld - Volume 17 - Issue 34 | date=August 21, 1995 | volume=17 | issue=34}}</ref><ref name="Web">[http://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=4 Roads and Crossroads of Internet History] Chapter 4: Birth of the Web</ref>
}}