<story><title>The End of the Googleverse</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/23846048/google-search-memes-images-pagerank-altavista-seo-keywords</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>taylodl</author><text>I still remember the day when I read the Slashdot article announcing this new incredible search engine called Google. I was an AltaVista user at the time, along with most IT professionals, and for those who don&amp;#x27;t know, it essentially had its own search query language. The claim was Google returned back even &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; results WITHOUT having to specify all those query parameters.&lt;p&gt;I tried it - it was unbelievable! A simple search box, type in your keyword(s) you&amp;#x27;re interested in, no query syntax and - voila! Good, relevant results! It was simply amazing! AltaVista essentially died overnight.&lt;p&gt;But really, Google&amp;#x27;s biggest technology was AdSense. It&amp;#x27;s how they make their money. It&amp;#x27;s why all their other services, save for gmail and google docs, have come and gone. Search has become less and less relevant in today&amp;#x27;s world. But there was a time when it seemed magical!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bigger_cheese</author><text>In the Pre-google days of the internet you used to have to play &amp;quot;search engine bingo&amp;quot; to find useful results I remember jumping between Lycos, Metacrawler, Altavista and Infoseek and it was still a coin flip if you would get useful results.&lt;p&gt;Search engines used to require you to use Boolean operators &amp;quot;+&amp;quot; &amp;quot;AND&amp;quot; &amp;quot;OR&amp;quot; &amp;quot;NOT&amp;quot; to filter search results. My high school library had a laminated card next to the internet connected PC (via dial up modem) explaining how Boolean operators worked and with suggested search engines to use (this was around 1996&amp;#x2F;1997).&lt;p&gt;The eye opener to me was my high school class was given an assignment to write about the upcoming &amp;quot;G8 Summit&amp;quot;, Russia had just joined the G7 creating the G8 and it was a big news story at the time. I can remember how frustrating it was to find any results searching for things required constructing strings like &amp;quot;G+8+Summit OR Group+of+8+Summit&amp;quot;etc in sites like infoseek and still getting nonsense results. I found the information I needed to complete the assignment by going to public library which had copies of various daily newspapers archived I basically quoted newspaper articles to complete the assignment and concluded the internet was useless for finding information. I complained about my situation at home and my Dad Casually mentioned have you tried &amp;quot;google.com&amp;quot; next ay at school I typed &amp;quot;G8 Summit&amp;quot; into google and immediately got relevant results. I was a convert to google immediately it was so far ahead of every other search engine at the time it was like night and day.</text></comment>
<story><title>The End of the Googleverse</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/23846048/google-search-memes-images-pagerank-altavista-seo-keywords</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>taylodl</author><text>I still remember the day when I read the Slashdot article announcing this new incredible search engine called Google. I was an AltaVista user at the time, along with most IT professionals, and for those who don&amp;#x27;t know, it essentially had its own search query language. The claim was Google returned back even &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; results WITHOUT having to specify all those query parameters.&lt;p&gt;I tried it - it was unbelievable! A simple search box, type in your keyword(s) you&amp;#x27;re interested in, no query syntax and - voila! Good, relevant results! It was simply amazing! AltaVista essentially died overnight.&lt;p&gt;But really, Google&amp;#x27;s biggest technology was AdSense. It&amp;#x27;s how they make their money. It&amp;#x27;s why all their other services, save for gmail and google docs, have come and gone. Search has become less and less relevant in today&amp;#x27;s world. But there was a time when it seemed magical!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hyperthesis</author><text>The basic ad auction idea came from goto.com&amp;#x2F;Overture &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;publishing2.scottkarp.ai&amp;#x2F;2008&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;27&amp;#x2F;google-adwords-a-brief-history-of-online-advertising-innovation&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;publishing2.scottkarp.ai&amp;#x2F;2008&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;27&amp;#x2F;google-adwords-a...&lt;/a&gt;  Strangely difficult to find info on this.</text></comment>