Nothing really went wrong - everything happens for a reason. In the mid-90s, it became obvious to agencies, artists, business owners and institutions that the Web had tremendous creative, personal, and business potential. But Web display was primitive, functionality almost nonexistent aside from Perl.

Clients wanted Web presences fast. Agencies rose up to create those presences. Robust standards were not yet in place. So browser makers made up tags, while Web designers figured out ways to hack them.

The commercial success of that approach had its own momentum. By the time standards were in place--such as CSS in 1996--developers and browser makers alike largely ignored them in favor of proprietary innovations. That, I suppose, is what went wrong. But we were all moving so quickly it was hard to see exactly what we were moving toward, which was a Balkanized future of incompatible sites, browsers and technologies.