I think it bears mention of how spoiled we are when it comes to information in the modern era. If I need to look up a quick unit conversion on the fly, or simply troubleshoot something, it’s a query away on Google. However, this wasn’t always the case. The search behemoth as we know it didn’t come into prominence until the early 2000s.
Today, we’re looking at the also-rans of internet searches, and thanking our lucky stars we don’t have to use 6 of them to get useful information.
The First Search Engine
It might come as a surprise, but search engines predate the web as we know it. Before the rise of internet conglomerates or even just widespread internet access, there was a need for a search engine. However, the first true viable search engine to hit the web was Archie, debuting in 1990.
This wasn’t a search engine in the modern sense, you weren’t querying how many tablespoons go into a half cup. Instead, it was a means of searching for files on the many FTP servers littering the early web. This wasn’t for the faint of heart, you were expected to have a working knowledge of protocols like Telnet to even connect to the search service.
The Web’s Explosion
The Dot-com Bubble brought quite a bit of innovation in the world of search engines. Engines like Excite, AltaVista, Yahoo, AskJeeves, and far more sprung up from 1995 to 2000 or so. This led to the first competing search arms race of sorts, with Netscape announcing a $5 million contract for a default search engine.
This had its benefits and its annoyances. Searching for information on an essay as a kid wasn’t easy when you had to consult six search engines and then cross-reference that with printed media to make sure your sources were legitimate.
This did highlight the need for a comprehensive web-crawling search engine, and in 1998 this would start. Google opened that year, and it would change the web for good.
The Modern Era
By 2000, the Dot-com Bubble burst, and the landscape had changed considerably. When the dust settled, there were few search engines left that were viable for daily drivers. Google was at the top of the heap, using cutting-edge means to deliver solid results in the first couple of page results.
This made my high school life considerably easier, but it also changed the way we interacted with the web. At its core, the web used to be quite fragmented, decentralized even. Before Google’s rise to prominence using a search engine might yield completely different results from place to place.
As such, it was somewhat of a revelation to have solid results right away. You no longer had to cross-reference results between the likes of Yahoo and Excite.
Conclusion
Search engines remain one of the curious artifacts of the early internet. While many still exist, like the aforementioned Google, Yandex, Bing, and others, the way people approach them is quite different on the whole. We’re also seeing the likes of AI chatbots like ChatGPT supplanting the role search engines once played.
Time will tell if the humble search engine will remain in operation in the next 20 years, but I’m simply glad they were there during my early years on the internet when I was in need of some vital information.
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