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WebCrawler Turns 10 Today

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the young-at-art dept.

Brian Pinkerton writes "WebCrawler, one of the first search engines on the 'Net, turns 10 today. You can read a short history of WebCrawler. When I wrote WebCrawler, one could do a credible job of crawling, indexing, and searching the Web from a single desktop PC. Today, the reality is a little bit different."

15 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Guess this celebration... by oberondarksoul · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...won't have an accompanying Google Doodle?

    --
    And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
  2. Birthdays by 7Ghent · · Score: 4, Funny

    Happy birthday to Webcrawler AND Hitler! Hurray!

    1. Re:Birthdays by stevejsmith · · Score: 3, Funny

      ...and 4/20.

  3. /me 's jaw hits the floor by Stalin · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can't believe it is even still around.

  4. Re:They used to be my google.... by Basehart · · Score: 4, Funny

    I really like their pantyhosecrawler companion site.

    Very cool research tool.

  5. Then and now... by jdreed1024 · · Score: 5, Funny
    When I wrote WebCrawler, one could do a credible job of crawling, indexing, and searching the Web from a single desktop PC. Today, the reality is a little bit different.

    No kidding. Back then, one could serve a website from most any machine, and it would be there for all to see. Today only the largest websites can avoid a slashdotting with only 9 posts in the thread.

    --
    There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    1. Re:Then and now... by mph · · Score: 5, Funny
      Today only the largest websites can avoid a slashdotting with only 9 posts in the thread.
      Imagine how bad it would be if everyone actually read the articles.
  6. Birthday party by jacobhoupt · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'll be hosting my tenth annual WebCrawler birthday party tonight in the back of my Yugo.

    Feel free to drop in, there should be plenty of seating available for those interested.

    --
    -- the only good thing the French ever did was two chicks at one time
  7. my new hero by theMerovingian · · Score: 4, Funny


    Some guys are too cool for their own good. Brian Pinkerton has the domain 'thinkpink.com', AND he wrote his own search engine.

    I bet he even has a 3-digit UID, a beowulf cluster of Xboxes running linux, and he sold all his stock options during the bubble. :)

    --
    "If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
  8. Already Slashdotted by MrRuslan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Here is the google cache
    http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:-vPR77Hq9OYJ: www.thinkpink.com/bp/WebCrawler/History.html+&hl=e n&ie=UTF-8

  9. First query? by Xzzy · · Score: 4, Funny

    So who remembers the first search query they typed into Webcrawler?

    I was just crawling out of the gopher world, a short period where I was getting turned on to the web but there was no way to find links, almost everything came through the university homepage or word of mouth. Then someone pointed me to webcrawler.

    What did I search for first? "fart jokes". No kidding.

    "boobs" was second.

  10. Well isn't that ironic by Zygote-IC- · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, to read a story celebrating an anniversary about a search engine, we have to go through the cache of another search engine?

    Go figure.

  11. The WebCrawler Search Voyeur by Faust7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anyone remember the WebCrawler Search Voyeur?

    It was a little Java applet that sat on your screen and displayed the pseudo-real-time search queries of other people.

    When I was a computer lab monitor at my college, we used to note in the log book any particularly amusing queries that we'd seen.

    "hairy woman"... "squirrel torture"... "tom AND cruise AND foot AND odor"... "asian girl underage spanking"...

    --
    The coolest voice ever.
    1. Re:The WebCrawler Search Voyeur by intangible · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember that it wouldn't show every search of course, but you could verify it was working by searching for the same phrase over and over again. About 10 seconds later, you could see your search phrase. You could actually use it to communicate with other people, albeit a little slow, but it was amusing. I would type in silly things just so others watching the voyeur would see them.
      I bet you guys recorded some of my stuff :P

  12. Re:WebCrawler on NeXTStep - before Open Source by houseofmore · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ah it's just a perl module I think. Google::Search or something or other...