Since its inception, the entire premise of the Internet centered on file sharing. Many people don’t realize that fact, but if you think about it you realize that the Internet has always existed to promote the sharing of information. Gnutella arms the Internet community with a tool that goes back to the basics of the Internet.

When the World Wide Web first began to emerge, people would put up a page and link to other pages. In turn, those pages would return the link. The advent of the “hyperlink” and the WWW in early 1990 was a huge step in the development of the Internet as we know it today. Similarly, Napster’s arrival on the scene spawned development of technology that allows people to find and share information. When the company Napster got sued and eventually shut down, it was up to us to make sure the idea didn’t die.

Where did Gnutella come from? The evil-geniuses at Nullsoft (creators of Winamp) first developed the protocol in late 1999. Since Nullsoft had recently been acquired by AOL (soon to be AOL-Time Warner), the problems that would arise remain obvious. Nullsoft basically had to cease using the company’s resources to develop this technology because the record labels saw (and still see) it as a threat to their industry.

However, what the technology really accomplishes, is not a threat to any industry; rather, it creates a revamped atmosphere on the Internet, enabling users to share information like never before. To put it simply, Gnutella puts the personal interaction back into the Internet. When you run Gnutella software and connect to the Gnutella Network, you bring with you the information you wanted to make public. And you choose what information to share. You can choose to share nothing; you can choose to share one file, a directory, or your entire hard drive (we do not recommend this option).

One of the major differences between Gnutella and Napster-like software is that those applications are centralized. That means the technology uses central servers where the government agencies can spy on you and infringe on your freedom to search the net.

So Gnutella allows you to search for information anonymously, and it allows you to search for information in a setting that differs from traditional search engines like Yahoo! because unlike search engines like that, the information is not controlled or fed to you. Nothing is pushed at you; you control what you look for.

To read more about Gnutella check out the page at GnutellaNews here.

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