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Google, Circa 2001
An anonymous reader writes "If you have 10 minutes to spare, take a look at an archive that Google has posted to mark the company's 10th anniversary. The search engine and its results are based on data from 2001, but it's interesting to see what turns up when popular 2008 terms are entered. For instance, iPod generates a reference to Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System, and the 771 Barack Obama results centered around his duties as an Illinois State Senator."
Try searching for 'sarah palin' or 'conspiracy theory' for a few minutes of fun
Now you'll see why snapshots are good :)
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It was so refreshing to search for 9/11 and not have any of the crap from the last seven years show up. A simpler time indeed.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
This how you act everytime you read something about Obama that's not in complete admiration?
Even topics which don't get much attention anymore score much higher in 2008:
Napster: (1,130,000) 17.300.000
Millenium: (1,170,000) 23,900,000
Kursk: (98,300) 3,040,000
I guess 3 factors play a role: Google has better spiders, the net is growing and we have more redundancy.
One thing I haven't figured out yet: Have they filtered results which the current version does not display anymore for legal reasons?
I don't read replies by ACs.
This how you act everytime you read something about Obama that's not in complete admiration?
This how you react everytime you read a joke?
This is a useful tool, as well as being a bit of fun.
In addition to all the standard "wii gives no results!" posts, what I noticed, and what was nice to see when searching for a few things, was the absolute lack of blog/link spam everywhere. Searching for a couple of terms that I still search for now yielded 300 odd results - but 300 *relevant result*. Searching for the same thing with the 2008 engine gives me tens of thousands - but 90% of them are just pollution results. The 2001 engine actually kicked up a few "new" results for things that, while still technically available on the 2008 engine, are on page 152 of it - and so hence essentially lost and I have never seen them before.
It links in to what I have argued previously - fork search engines. A bleeding edge "just spidered" version for those who want to chase up-to-the-minute things - and a "stable" time-lag version that would defeat the point of spam (if a blog/link spamming campaign has to wait for a couple of years to get their search results in to the stable engine results then they are less likely to bother).
As they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
You can also find in books from the 1970's dire predictions that by the year 2000 the world will have been all but destroyed by: running out of oil, running out of food, running out of $SOME_OTHER_RESOURCE, overpopulation, nuclear war, the Rapture, etc.. etc.. All of which are notable of course for not having happened.
No Facebook, MySpace, or 4chan. What a wonderful world. But there was a lot of the 90's MIDI-playing pages and flashing colors.
But there was a lot of the 90's MIDI-playing pages and flashing colors.
You obviously haven't accidentally clicked on a myspace page recently...