This is something I've always wondered. On all major operating systems, application menus (File/Edit/View etc) only appear on click. However, nearly every web site that uses a drop-down menu instantiates it on hover, not on click.
How and why did this convention come about?
Answer
I have no idea as to the actual correct answer to this question, but let me speculate: I think it's because the web has hyperlinks. Clicking on something on a web site is associated with visiting a different page, and as such, if you were to create a dropdown menu that activates on click, the expectation of what it may do when activated is uncertain: will it direct me to a new page or will it pop open a menu? So if you continue that line of logic, creating hover menus makes a lot of sense, because before a user clicks you can present them with feedback indicating they've activated a menu.
It may also factor into the famed internet attention deficit problem which is where all the numbers showing people hanging around on your page for only a few seconds comes from. I know the "users don't click" concept is a myth, but a lot of people don't, and it may lead to a lot of menus being implemented using hover state because the designers expect users won't click because they think it may lead them to a different page.
Further, I imagine it's a repeating cycle: designers see hover menus and design hover menus, which more designers see and more designers design. Not everyone thinks about each individual UI control they're using in terms of why they need it and what purpose it has; many designers I've worked with choose controls "because that's what you use" (see: incessant overuse of the autocomplete combo box; a rant for another time).
Contrast the above with desktop breed apps where there is (usually) no hover state, certainly not as a UI pattern for menus, and I think we've come full circle.
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