On the Internet, it has become a generally accepted standard that hyperlinks – i.e. text contents that link to another website – are blue. But why is that? The reason for this can be found in the early days of the Internet. Back then, the program “Mosaic” was one of the most frequently used Internet browsers in the world, with the very special feature that it displayed the background of a website in an unattractive gray tone.
This shade of gray was chosen by Tim Berners-Lee, one of the main developers of the browser, because it was the darkest color you could use at that time – apart from the black of the text. Why the background absolutely had to be dark, nobody knows anymore. Berners-Lee then sought to find a color that represented the greatest possible contrast to the gray in order to be able to make special text areas – the hyperlinks – more noticeable. The choice fell on the familiar blue, and it has not changed until this day.