By 1990, the Internet was well-established as a network of networks that allowed computers in one location to share information easily with computers in another location, especially between universities and other research organizations.

Most communication over the Internet was text-based, including e-mail, discussion boards, and chat services. Users could also send binary files such as sound files, pictures, and documents, but software compatibility issues and limited network speeds made it more difficult to share media files that were not plain text.

Document servers that allowed users to search for and download files were available for research, but the user typically had to have special software to connect to those servers, and the connections had to be set up manually each time the user wanted to find a document.