44 replies to this topic

[Arx]

Google has been the leading search engine for many years now, it makes me wonder how one out of what seems like a million different search engines could stand out so much to the point where very few of us would consider using something else. What I am curious about, is what search engines did people use before the invasion of Google? I remember using a site called Metacrawler and that it wasn't the most effective thing ever for what I was looking for, but it worked nonetheless. I remember using yahoo too but again, it wasn't that refined back then either. Post what search engines you used before Google if such a time in your life existed This will be interesting...

[brainless]

I remember the Metacrawler, too ... but except for some specialized search services, I ended up using Google, just like many, many other people :/

I remember that there's some kind of project trying to rebuild the Google indexing/search engine but without any censorship, back when I had a first look at it, it was in early beta stage and I was busy with graduating from school and now I can't find it anymore

[Plenoptic]

I used MSN the most before Google. I remember using GoMamma a few times but I didn't use Ask Jeeves that much. I think the only reason why I began to use Google was the fact that it was easy to remember and there wasn't any ads or whatever to get in my way of searching. I used Yahoo sometimes when MSN failed and I figured MetaCrawler was too long to type so I didn't use that much.

[grimreaper]

life would be so bad with out google if google was not around what would we use stupid ask or stupid yahoo search. if i was bill gates i would buy out all the other search engine and make google the #1 search engine on the planet

[Dragonfly]

I couldn't recall life before Google. The reason may be I was not probably using internet. And search was not that important initially since webpages were also few. I remember browsing to websites like fedora mail, usa.net mail, yahoo, and few more websites. And many of them don't care so much about search at that time. By the time search became popular Google was right there to answer.

[lemonwonder]

Well, according to my research, google opened several days after the internet was laucnched, u can try trace any websites, but they wont go back to far, and according to what i traced, google was about... 1 month and a half after the web opened

[roundball]

before google i was using dogpile. at the time it was considered the premier search engine around. i havent been on there since moses played nfl though. long time.

did use yahoo at one point and still do now and then.

[dontmaimyourself]

Well I didn't really use the internet that much before Google made it big, so I really didn't use anything but Google, well I used Yahoo for a while but that was powered by Google, so I suppose that really counts as Google. I know my sister used to use Lycos, but I think that might have just been the cute dog. Now I wouldn't even consider another search engine, I'd just use a better criteria if Google failed me or I'd give up before I used another.

[TypoMage]

Want to know why yahoo did not work out? First of all there site is full of junk. It takes way to long for it to load. And also google is so plain. And no extra junk. That is one reason why they are the best!

[Dooga]

When Google didn't exist, I was still in grade one, and we were using Windows 95 with a 15 inch monitor, and the internet was slower than our old internet connection, which said a lot. At that time, we used "kid versions" of yahoo, which is "yahooligans" and other sites like "ask jeeves for kids" etc. They were the worst sites ever. Yahooligans didn't render any results that were useful, and Ask Jeeves never answered my questions, they just lead to useless kid sites like crayola.com... And when Google arrived when I was in second grade, we weren't allowed to use Google, since it was "dangerous"...