At the end of 1993, gopher was much more popular than the web, gopherspace was bigger, had search engines like veronica and so forth. You would hear about the web, and download lynx, and connect to a dull University of Kanas web page, or perhaps CERN's web page. Gopher just had a lot more content, was searchable with veronica, was more enjoyable to browse etc.
Some of this behind the scenes stuff mattered, like University of Minnesota's announcement of licensing fees. But the release of the Netscape browser is really what changed things for a lot of people, with its inline images, live cameras like the Fishcam, and this sort of thing. Mosaic was a harbinger of it, but the release of the initial Netscape browser in 1994 is what really set things going, and then the release of Netscape 2 and then 3 in 1996. Then Microsoft release of their then-primitive browser with Windows 95 helped as well (as well as them including an IP stack in Windows 95 - Windows 3.1 needed things like Trumpet Winsock).
Some of this behind the scenes stuff mattered, like University of Minnesota's announcement of licensing fees. But the release of the Netscape browser is really what changed things for a lot of people, with its inline images, live cameras like the Fishcam, and this sort of thing. Mosaic was a harbinger of it, but the release of the initial Netscape browser in 1994 is what really set things going, and then the release of Netscape 2 and then 3 in 1996. Then Microsoft release of their then-primitive browser with Windows 95 helped as well (as well as them including an IP stack in Windows 95 - Windows 3.1 needed things like Trumpet Winsock).