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Google Turns 10
Ian Lamont writes "It was on September 7, 1998 that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc., aiming to provide a better search engine. You can see what it looked like here. Google had a relatively good search engine technology that succeeded in burying many late 1990s competitors, and it eventually developed a successful advertising model and pledged to operate on a 'don't be evil' philosophy. The company now has nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value, and has been acquiring or developing a host of groundbreaking technologies. When did you start using its search engine? Is the world a better place because of Google?"
Wow, until I looked at those pics I didn't realise 'Google!' was an anagram of 'Go Lego!'
In late 1999 I heard buzz from my fellow geeks that Google provided amazing results, so I tried it out. Within a couple days, I completely abandoned Alta Vista for Google, and even scaled back bothering with Yahoo because the results were just crazy accurate. I found myself boosting it to friends both of the geek persuasion and not, and everyone liked it. IMO, it was truly a case of a superior product trouncing the competition, the entire point of capitalism. They built a better mouse trap (pun not entirely intended).
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
Um...no it's not.
Try 1010.
I'm sure you know that, but I just had to reply to a post with an Invader Zim quote in it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Google was attractive at first mostly because the interface was so clean compared to the "web portal" crap that every other search engine suddenly morphed into in the late 90s. Altavista had a reasonable database and a great command interface.
I used a meta-crawler (a front end of multiple search engines) and saw that most of my "good" results were from Google. After seeing how fast it loaded on dialup, there was no turning back.
Unfortunately for Google (and Adobe, and Xerox) what they want people to do doesn't matter. Fortunately for the Google and Adobe, when people talk about "googling" or "photoshopping" they are still usually using their products. Unlike the large number of people making xeroxes on their Canon copier.
From where I'm sitting, today is September 5th.
If the skate were not Roller Blades I wouldn't use the term "roller blading".
Yes, but it's a good way to stick out like a giant wrinkly penis in social settings to not use the common phrases for things. I call gelatin deserts 'jello', inline skates 'roller blades', and using the search bar in a browser 'googling', if for not other reason than to not have to stop and explain things with more words than needed.
Then again, as a personal entity with no stake in these corporate entities, I could care less about their trademark protections.
Anyway, just about everyone uses Google nowadays, so it's usually going to be technically correct to say "googling".
it was the load speed. While every other search engine/crawler took forever to load a boat load of crap, Google was simple.
Really, does any person outside of Google care if returns .02 seconds faster then a competitor?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I discovered it 1999, in my first job in IT.
I remember one of my colleagues was rather dismissive of it, suggesting that a search engine was only as good as the number of pages it had indexed. Google was new, therefore it couldn't have indexed as many as the others. I started using it anyway.
What I remember is that before google I used to bookmark everything useful I found, so I could be sure of finding it again. After using google for a while I stopped bothering. It was quicker to find a page with google that troll through my huge list of bookmarks.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
I started using google sometime in 1996, quite possibly shortly after they started in January. I heard about this new search engine, possibly even here on slashdot, and gave it a try.
Before then, I was mostly using Alta Vista. It was ok, but you really had to dig through the results to find what you needed. I remember that time as "all search engines suck, Alta Vista just sucks less".
Then I tried google.stanford.edu and never went back. Literally. Their index was much smaller than Alta Vista at that time, but their results were so much better. Alta Vista had all sorts of garbage on their front page, but that never really bothered me -- it was all about the search results, the cleaner front page was just a side benefit.
So, in response to the previous poster, I would argue that Google *WAS* some sort of a savior. Definitely back in 1996 they were.
Maybe those that came in later like 1998 to 2000 were coming from a much improved Alta Vista than I was, but in 1996 Alta Vista was really quite terrible in comparison with Google.
Sean
Bullshit, as long as I've been using the web nothing comes close to googles search quality.
Ok perhaps they aren't our saviour or something like that but no other search engine even came close to such precise and exact results.
I can type in exactly what I want and I get it 99% of the time (and I mean 99%)
Try that with Live search even today and it spits back all kind of ridiculous shit, you have to wonder what on earth it's thinking.
Interesting question: Do you know anyone who doesn't? I personally don't (well, possibly I do, but just don't know that they don't, but I haven't personally witnessed anyone using something else for their web search in a LONG time).
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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