Who killed Gopher? An extensible murder mystery

Everyone knew there had to be an easier way to use the Internet than the Unix shell experience, mind you, but original editions of the Gopher and HyperText Transfer Protocols were painfully trivial hacks that did nothing FTP didn't already handle. So here begins our mysterious tale: why either protocol ever rose to prominence in the first place; and how the fratricidal drama eventually played out. Understanding how HTTP killed Gopher may lead us to the forces that may, in turn, topple HTTP.