Well, GZIP is GNU ZIP. I ale says expected it was developed after the original ZIP.

gzip is just the compression/decompression algorithm (Deflate) from PKZip.

They needed a new compress/decompress tool once IBM asserted their patent rights on the LZW algorithm used in the compress tool.

gzip adds its own file header with lots of useless information like a field for a file name.

zip uses a different header for the compression stream, commonly known as the zlib format.

They also use different checksums at the end (CRC32 vs Adler32).

That's what the name might mean but it's simply wrong. gzip is not the same format as ZIP, and the tool itself is unable to read or write ZIP files.

It is however GNU's alternative to the zip format.

A gigazip is 1000 zips

That would be a g̶i̶b̶i̶ kibizip.

No, it's a kilozip, like kilometer (= 1024 meters). A gigazip (not gibizip) would be 1'073'741'824 zips (1024^3 = 2^30).

Also it should be Gzip, not gzip, although it's not ambiguous since the reciprocal prefix is nano-, and in general there are no 2^-X0 prefixes that start with g- like there is for Mega-/milli-.

kibimeter = 1024 meters

kilometer = 1000 meters

https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

Was this post sponsored by the hard drive industry?

I remember fruitlessly trying to open a .zip file with gunzip back in the mid 90s. That was my first experience of the GNU project.