Nine Search Engines We Used BEFORE Google Ruled The Internet
Recalling the early days of Internet Search
Can you remember the days when people said they had “Searched for something on the Internet?”
Now people simply say they “Googled it.”
The first reported usage of the word “Google” as a verb occurred in 1998, and it came from — surprise, surprise — Google founder Larry Page.
I wonder what people hearing him say that at the time thought. I’d be willing to bet that at least some of them felt he was being arrogant.
Within eight years, Google had risen to become THE dominant search engine. Nobody is remotely fazed if you tell them to “Google it” today.
Fun Fact: In 2006 the verb “Google” entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
Not bad for a product which was first launched just 8 years previously!
However — and this may come as a surprise to some of you younger readers — the Internet existed BEFORE Google.
In 1994, I purchased my first PC — and was online before the end of that year. Dial-up internet was the norm, which meant that when I was online, the computer commandeered the phone line. It was also excruciatingly sluggish; if a web page loaded in less than three…
