Why are hyperlinks blue?

Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and early pioneer of the Internet, revealed the answer on a podcast. — Pixabay

Have you ever wondered why stop signs are octagonal, or why high heels are considered fancy footwear? What about hyperlinks? Have you ever wondered why hyperlinks are blue? Well it turns out there is a reason, and the creator of hyperlinks, Marc Andreessen, knows what that reason is, and he revealed the answer this week. 

Andreessen, who runs the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and has been called the Godfather of Silicon Valley, is also the co-creator of Mosaic, one of the earliest web browsers. As the first browser to feature text and graphics on the same page, Mosaic became the most popular method for exploring the World Wide Web after its launch in 1993. While it’s since been discontinued, some features, like the color of hyperlinks, have stood the test of time. And now we know why Andreessen picked the color blue for hyperlinks. 

“Because I like blue,” Andreessen revealed on a podcast this week. “It’s a nice, firm colour. It had to be some colour.” 

In 1994 Andreessen released Netscape’s Netscape Navigator, igniting the browser wars with Microsoft. For years the two tech companies released new software to best the other, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape’s Mozilla Firefox. Eventually, AOL acquired Netscape in 1999, while Microsoft has become one of the largest companies in the world.

Web users live with Andreessen’s somewhat random colour choice every day, but not all of his design ideas had the same longevity.

“What I really wanted was dark mode,” Andreessen says, adding that his eyes are sensitive to white backgrounds. “But I couldn’t get there at that point because the displays weren’t good enough to do [that].”

So the next time you ask someone about their favourite colour, just know that the answer might have far-reaching implications. – Inc/Tribune News Service