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Believe it or not, there was once a world\h
of search engines that did not contain AI\h\h

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summaries filled with nonsensical garbage.\h
There was once a world of search engines that\h\h

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did not always serve up a Wikipedia article or\h
Reddit thread. There was once a world of search\h\h

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engines where exciting things could happen\h
and dreams could be forged, all at the press\h\h

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of a button. Well close enough anyway.
In fact the real excitement was the wealth\h\h

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of choice we had available, and the battle\h
between these companies, forging their path\h\h

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on this brand new landscape.
On the 15th March 1985, the first\h\h

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internet .com domain was registered;\h
symbolics.com. Symbolics was a computer\h\h

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manufacturer located in Cambridge, Massachusetts,\h
that from 1980 had created a range of computers\h\h

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utilising the Lisp programming language; Lisp\h
Machines. Technically the first commercial\h\h

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computer workstations. So it’s no surprise\h
they wanted the first internet domain too.
\h

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By the end of 1985, there was only a handful of\h
domains registered. Indeed, even by 1989, pickings\h\h

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were sparse. But we’re talking a time before even\h
the World Wide Web. A working version of which\h\h

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wasn’t ready until the end of 1990. So before this\h
point, searching the internet, in the way we know\h\h

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it now, wasn’t really necessary. You tended to\h
know which domains you wanted to connect to.
\h

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Even so, there were tools, such as\h
Wide Area Information Server Systems,\h\h

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using Archie to index FTP archives, and the using\h
the TCP/IP Application Layer protocol Gopher,\h\h

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which predated HTTP and had its own search\h
engines such as Jughead and Veronica.
\h

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But the web as we know it was started\h
here. This NeXT machine, used by Sir Tim\h\h

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Berners-Lee was actually the world’s first\h
web server, hosting the first web page at\h\h

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nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.
This webpage would soon include a list of other\h\h

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pages that you could navigate to through\h
HTML. The link “What’s out there” breaking\h\h

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down various pages by Subject and Type. We\h
could look at the US weather, some politics,\h\h

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and of course, an online link to the Bible. Our\h
lord and saviour is always ahead of the curve.
\h

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But this was a limiting way to explore the web. It\h
depended on these links being updated by whoever\h\h

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was looking after the page. So if you created\h
a new website, on a new domain, you might have\h\h

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to kindly request that your website be added.
This form of page would quickly become known as a\h\h

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link page, or for the larger versions, organised\h
by category; a directory. A hand picked list of\h\h

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sites that you could visit and explore from.
That’s fine when there’s a few thousand websites\h\h

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in the world, but with the Mosaic\h
web browser launching in late 1993,\h\h

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things were taking off at a rapid pace.
But it wasn’t commercial enterprise that\h\h

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attempted to create a tool to shine a light\h
into the unknown, it was University of Stirling\h\h

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graduate Jonathon Fletcher, who decided to put the\h
Scottish university’s internet server to use.
\h

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Search engines of sorts already existed,\h
such as W3Catalog and Aliweb. However,\h\h

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neither of these are like the search engines\h
we know today. W3Catalog just referenced\h\h

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existing link pages on the web and updated\h
from there, whilst Aliweb required website\h\h

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owners to notify of their existence. However\h
Jonathon Fletcher’s JumpStation combined the\h\h

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three essential elements of a modern search\h
engine; crawling, indexing and searching.
\h

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You see, a search engine isn’t some magic\h
portal to the web. It’s just a database,\h\h

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held on a server, that periodically gets updated\h
as and when new content is found. It’s the job\h\h

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of the crawl-bot to find this new content,\h
and it does that by visiting its known sites\h\h

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and following the links within. If a site has\h
linked to a new page or site then it’s added\h\h

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to the search engine’s database. Each page added\h
to the database is indexed, in these early days,\h\h

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usually just by the words found within it. Then\h
a query form is made available to a visitor,\h\h

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so that they can search this indexed database.\h
From which results are then presented to the\h\h

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searcher in the form of a URL list.
JumpStation, launched on 12th December\h\h

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1993 did all of this. Although, in a bid\h
to save resources, only document titles\h\h

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and webpage headings were indexed at this point,\h
which kinda did the job back then. By the time\h\h

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the site closed down in late 1994, the database\h
held 275,000 entries, spanning 1,500 servers.
\h

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Other search tools popped up in that time,\h
but WebCrawler, released in April 1994 was the\h\h

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first search engine that actually indexed entire\h
webpages, allowing users to search for any words\h\h

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within those pages. This proved so useful that it\h
became the standard for search going forward.
\h

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By this time Infoseek, founded by Steve\h
Kirsch, had also rolled out, although\h\h

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initially as a pay to use service. Something it\h
would later drop, becoming the default search\h\h

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engine for Netscape Navigator in 1995.
Lycos, what began as a research project\h\h

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headed by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie\h
Mellon University appeared in July 1994,\h\h

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and quickly gained popularity. The name\h
Lycos was actually derived from Lycosidae,\h\h

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the scientific name for the “wolf spider”1; an\h
excellent hunter that catch prey by finding it,\h\h

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instead of luring it into a web. Lycos has\h
full crawling, and indexing capability, but was\h\h

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heralded for it’s simplicity. Even the results\h
page was just a plain list of links relevant\h\h

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for the keyword. Within a month of launch Lycos\h
recorded more than 400,000 pages and documents.
\h

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By the start of 95, Yahoo! had built upon\h
their earlier directory feature by launching\h\h

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Yahoo Search, which allowed users to search\h
the Yahoo! Directory, and so actually not a\h\h

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true search engine, BUT due to the quality of\h
its directory, it became popular quickly.
\h

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But these engines would face serious\h
competition from Altavista. Which\h\h

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by it’s own reckoning became the most\h
comprehensive search engine on the web.
\h

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Even before it’s launch, there was intense hype\h
around AltaVista. Within weeks, hundreds of\h\h

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articles were written on how it’s “Super-Spider”\h
could help you find long lost friends or list\h\h

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all sites pointing to your page. It seemed that a\h
small group of friends and colleagues had indexed\h\h

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the entire web and were ready to serve it to\h
millions of users within fractions of a second.
\h

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The “Super-Spider” in question was actually called\h
“Scooter”. Scooter was AltaVista’s multi-threaded\h\h

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web crawler, and rather than collecting just\h
titles, or even key words and sentences, it would\h\h

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instead collect complete pages, which were then\h
indexed in their entirety, ready for searching.\h\h

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What’s more, it did this continuously, and\h
quickly. Meaning that if a new website appeared\h\h

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on the web, it could be retrieved from AltaVista\h
in hours rather than days or even weeks.
\h

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Most search engines at the time were running\h
out of university research labs, utilising their\h\h

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powerful machines, but AltaVista was a venture\h
launched by Digital Equipment Corporation, and\h\h

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they had the technology to boot. This included the\h
Alpha 8400 TurboLaser server. A beast of a system\h\h

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which contained 12 EV5 processors, each running\h
at 300MHz, alongside a whopping 28GB of RAM.\h\h

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When you bear in mind the average desktop PC then\h
was a 486 running at 50MHz with 8MB of RAM, this\h\h

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is obscene. But then, so was the price, with each\h
server costing around half a million dollars.
\h

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This then was when search really started\h
to get serious. Altavista had started a\h\h

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race which meant Lycos and Yahoo had to\h
step up their game. But it also meant\h\h

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that competition came thicker and faster.
By the end of 1996, AltaVista was handling\h\h

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19 million requests per day, and had a\h
database covering over 30 million pages.\h\h

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But Lycos was still dominating, in terms of\h
volume at least, with its crawlers having\h\h

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apparently indexed 60 million pages.
This was starting to become a war of stats,\h\h

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but really, this isn’t what people\h
wanted. People wanted clarity and\h\h

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they wanted results that were relevant.
That’s where RankDex came onto it’s own2.\h\h

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Defining an important part of search, and\h
that is, how results are ranked. Originally,\h\h

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results were just delivered how they fell out\h
of the database. Altavista started using other\h\h

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factors, such as the how frequently the keyword\h
being searched for appeared on the page, serving\h\h

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the pages with the highest frequency first. But\h
this quickly led to problems, such as websites\h\h

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spamming their pages with popular keywords in\h
order to artificially inflate their rankings.
\h

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Rankdex then would begin using backlinks to\h
measure the quality of websites. That is,\h\h

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if a website or page has more hyperlinks directed\h
to it, then it’s more likely to be a reputable\h\h

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source of information, and therefore the content\h
it contains is likely to be more relevant to the\h\h

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searcher. In these early days especially, this was\h
an incredibly effective way of ranking content.
\h

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At around the same time, Larry Page and\h
Sergey Brin were working on a little search\h\h

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service called BackRub; the predecessor to\h
Google. With it’s crawl bots starting to\h\h

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scour the web in March 96, running from\h
Stanford’s Sun Ultra II web servers.
\h

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But by May, the online division of Wired\h
magazine, HotWired, in collaboration with\h\h

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American Internet Service Provider Inktomi\h
would launch the HotBot Search Engine. Now\h\h

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HotBot claimed to be even better than Altavista.\h
Having indexed 54 million pages and documents,\h\h

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and being able to refresh this entire index\h
once a week, this was probably the most up to\h\h

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date database of the web the 90s would see.
Things were indeed hotting up. Even before1997,\h\h

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the search engine world was saturated, and this\h
isn’t even including the Metasearch engines.
\h

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Otherwise known as Search Aggregator, these sites\h
used the databases and tools of search engines\h\h

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to create their own results. This included\h
sites like Dogpile, excite! and MetaCrawler,\h\h

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that could arguably serve up better results\h
without building their own foundations.
\h

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Dogpile pulled queries from Yahoo, Lycos,\h
Excite, Webcrawler, Infoseek, AltaVista,\h\h

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HotBot, WhatUSeek and the World Wide Web Worm,\h
as well as having the ability so earch Usenet,\h\h

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making it an incredibly comprehensive tool.\h
Whilst Excite offered services such as email\h\h

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and customisation from the go, giving them\h
distinct advantages over competitors.
\h

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Like most of these sites, Metacrawler was\h
again, created by a university graduate,\h\h

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Erik Selberg. By the end of 1996 Metacrawler was\h
receiving 150,000 queries per day, which was far\h\h

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too much for the University of Washington’s\h
DEC AlphaStation servers to keep up with,\h\h

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and so it become a commercial entity under NetBot\h
Inc, which was shortly after purchased by Excite!\h\h

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Excite! utilised features of Metacrawler to\h
create the Network Shopping Channel, demonstrating\h\h

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increasingly commercial ways these engines were\h
taking to make money, as some morphed more into\h\h

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web portals, rather than just search engines.
But even with this crowded area, the internet was\h\h

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growing at an exponential rate, and more casual\h
users demanded a more casual experience. So,\h\h

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in April 97 Ask Jeeves saw a gap in the market.\h
Unlike other engines which had their own query\h\h

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formatting, Jeeves was a natural language\h
engine. The idea here then was that you\h\h

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could type your question in a very human form,\h
and get search results that were appropriate.\h\h

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Ask Jeeves quickly began to build up an entire\h
brand around their search, including books and\h\h

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butler themed promotional items, capturing\h
a niche but stable portion of the market.
\h

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Of course this was a time for innovation,\h
and there was plenty still to be done.
\h

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On the 15th September 97 Google.com was\h
registered. Larry and Sergey having already\h\h

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tested the premise from Stanford’s website\h
and decided that BackRub was probably not\h\h

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the best name for their engine.
But Google wouldn’t actually launch\h\h

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until September 1998, around the same\h
time that Microsoft decided to get in\h\h

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on the act with the MSN Search Portal, which\h
actually used search results from Inktomi,\h\h

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the same database that HotBot ran on.
This database was also used by Direct Hit\h\h

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Technologies for their Popularity Search engine\h
which actually incorporated previous search\h\h

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activity to serve up more relevant results.\h
What we were seeing here was really the\h\h

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emergence of features that would at some point,\h
be common across all the main search engines.
\h

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But by this point, things were crazy.
We not only had a plethora of search engines,\h\h

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and search engines specific for other\h
languages, such as Russia’s Yandex,\h\h

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we also had much more comprehensive directories.\h
These directories, such as DMOZ, tried to\h\h

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concentrate of quality content. A curated batch\h
of sites and pages, rather than opening you up\h\h

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to the slurry of content available on the web, and\h
sometimes, these were actually the best choice.
\h

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But even putting the directories aside, if you\h
combine all the Metasearch engines and search\h\h

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engines there were hundreds to choose from. Not\h
to mention the spinoffs such as Yahooligans for\h\h

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kids and web portals that ISPs used, which were\h
usually either Metasearch engines themselves\h\h

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or using the technology of a product such\h
as Lycos, Inktomi or Altavista. Usually,\h\h

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people would flock to whichever ones were\h
suggested to them, a whole set business of\h\h

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websites even appeared specifically to investigate\h
and recommend which search engine to use….
\h

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This was a big money industry, one of the\h
biggest… these pages were indeed the portal\h\h

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to the internet, and so the main contenders\h
fired shots with big marketing campaigns.\h\h

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Offering free services, better features and\h
whatever else they could think of. However,\h\h

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it was probably Yahoo who struck the chord\h
most, with their humorous TV adverts.
\h

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As we went into the millennium, the\h
main contenders were shining through.
\h

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AltaVisa, Lycos, HotBot and Yahoo, with Excite\h
dominating the Metasearch world. MSN were also\h\h

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packing punches, mainly because their homepage was\h
the default landing page for Internet Explorer,\h\h

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those cheeky rascals…. but regardless,\h
that little company called Google were\h\h

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starting to get people’s attention,\h
and they were getting it fast.
\h

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In late 1999, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had\h
decided that Google was taking up too much of\h\h

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their study time and offered the business\h
to Excite for $750,000. The CEO of Excite,\h\h

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George Bell decided it was too expensive\h
and unnecessary, with Google having less\h\h

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than 10% of the market share at the time.
Google noticed that not everyone could win\h\h

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this race, this was a time of consolidation.\h
Much like the early micro wars of the 80s,\h\h

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a few would come out dominant. Deals such as\h
Lycos acquiring Wired Digital, and therefore\h\h

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the HotBot engine would become the norm.
But with the deal with excite dead,\h\h

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Google realised that people were starting to hone\h
on on their advantages. The first was it’s simple\h\h

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design, much like Lycos originally started, but\h
by now had progressed into mug’s eyeful. The\h\h

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second was the unintrusive advertising, Brin\h
and Page were against advertising altogether,\h\h

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but allowed some simple text ads (based on\h
searched keywords) to pay for their venture.\h\h

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The third was Google’s pagerank algorithm that\h
used various factors to rank search results. This\h\h

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method actually borrowed a lot from Robin Li’s\h
RankDex, which is actually cited in their 1998\h\h

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patent, but added in various other factors, that\h
would grow and adapt over time. This quickly put\h\h

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Google ahead of competitors in terms of relevant\h
search results and this did not go unnoticed by\h\h

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Search comparison sites and the general media.
The fourth reason however, was the name. Google.\h\h

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It was Larry Page himself who first wrote\h
“Have fun and keep googling” on an mailing\h\h

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list email from July 1998, two months before\h
the company had even launched. From there\h\h

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the verb quickly took off, giving the world a\h
concise word for “searching the internet”.
\h

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From there, things really did progress quickly.
By 2001, Google’s main competition was really msn\h\h

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and Yahoo! Although Microsoft’s business\h
practices and their antitrust case for\h\h

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monopolising internet browsers had left\h
a bitter taste in the mouths of some.
\h

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In 2002 Yahoo! would purchase Inktomi, and\h
Overture Services inc. which by that point\h\h

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already owned Altavista. Essentially eating\h
it’s competition apart from Google. In fact,\h\h

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up until that point Yahoo! was using Google’s\h
search functionality to power it’s own search,\h\h

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but in 2003 started using their new Yahoo\h
Slurp web crawler to power their own search.\h\h

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By leaning on all their acquisitions, they\h
hoped to use the technology to beat Google\h\h

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at their own game and retake dominance.
This switch actually dented Google’s market\h\h

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share for several months, but the damage was not\h
long term. Although Yahoo had plenty of resources\h\h

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and money to invest in their search, they also\h
had other arms to their business. For Google,\h\h

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it was really their only driving force, and at\h
that point, they already had over 30% share of the\h\h

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market. This enabled them to invest more in their\h
core functionality, creating a runaway success,\h\h

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that left most of their competition for dead.
In March 2004, the dependable Ask.com, formerly\h\h

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Ask Jeeves purchased Excite for 9.3million common\h
shares and $144million in cash. This was part of\h\h

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a strategy to rejuvenate their search services\h
across the board. However, it was an expensive\h\h

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and futile attempt, and they couldn’t keep up with\h
the search arms race between Google and Yahoo.
\h

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In June 2005 Google was valued at almost $52\h
billion, making it one of the world’s biggest\h\h

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media companies, and leaving tears in the eyes\h
for Excite who turned down the $750,000 deal.
\h

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Most of the prior search companies were just\h
strung out versions of their former selves\h\h

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at this point. Some tried to adapt. Lycos for\h
example, introduced several media services,\h\h

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including the Lycos phone which combined video\h
chat, real-time on demand video and an MP3 player.\h\h

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Lycos would eventually be sold to an internet\h
marketing company based in India in 2010.
\h

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In 2008 Yahoo were faced with laying off\h
hundreds of people, having become bloated\h\h

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over the years and now struggling in the face\h
of competition, mainly from Google. Especially\h\h

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with the launch of Google’s Chrome browser,\h
flipping the bird to Microsoft’s earlier\h\h

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business practices and starting the process\h
of toppling Internet Explorer’s dominance.
\h

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In February 2008, Microsoft made a\h
bid to acquire Yahoo for $47 billion,\h\h

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which was rejected by Yahoo, leaving Microsoft to\h
focus on building a new search engine, Bing.
\h

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In a cruel irony, by 2012 Yahoo\h
were unable to sustain their own\h\h

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search model and switched to using Bing’s\h
technology to power their own site.
\h

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Other search engines would come and go. Some\h
stuck around, focusing on ethics, a lack of\h\h

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advertising or just being a company\h
that wasn’t Google or Microsoft.
\h

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But, we never really regained the excitement\h
of those initial Search Engine battles,\h\h

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simply because Google got so good at serving up\h
what people wanted, that no one really needed\h\h

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to go anywhere else.
It’s inevitable.
\h

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The early days of products are always\h
an exciting playground of opportunity.\h\h

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Companies fighting each other, and in doing so\h
driving each other forward. But sooner or later,\h\h

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it’s just easier to go with the masses.
Good ole’ reliable convenience.
\h

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But should you wish to hark back to the days of\h
old and experience search like it was, there are\h\h

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still a few of the original search engines\h
running. A lot are just fronts using Google\h\h

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or Bing, but some, some are still doing their own\h
thing, and for that, they get my full respect.
\h

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Until next time, I’ve been Nostalgia Nerd.
Toodleoo.