i remember when i saw the first browser, i thought, this is it, this is the end of BBSes.

the browser wasn't better than most BBS clients. In fact, it was a bit worse. But the single thing that made the browser better was, it was totally permissionless, no login, you just needed a url, and boom, you got what you wanted, that might link to other things, and you could just visit those things, holy shit, this was amazing, it was the real Wild West of the internet.