WWW provides standardized access to

The web provides standardized access to Gopher, Telnet and FTP resources, covering all three of these services.

Gopher menus can be reached and displayed through a web browser using a common interface.

Telnet sessions to remote machines can be launched through web-standard links.

FTP file archives can be browsed and downloaded straight from the browser.

The web unifies these older services behind one URL scheme and one client.

This ability to wrap many protocols helped the web absorb earlier internet tools.