

Life Before Google. - tx
http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/2007/10/life-before-google.html
Do you remember you life before google? Or am I too old here? :-)
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ibsulon
To be fair, the search space was much smaller before Google. Also, I kept
using Altavista for quite a while before finally switching over to Google as
my default search, changing only because google is infinitely better on
technical searches.

Now, I use Ask for non-technical searches and google for technical ones -- I'm
really starting to like ask, but it doesn't prioritize technical searches like
Google.

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karzeem
I used Altavista, then HotBot, then Google. I remember reading a Time Magazine
article in 1998 about the "new wave" of search engines; it featured Google
pretty prominently, and I switched not long after that.

Google's results were very much better than everything else, by a much greater
margin than they are today. Before Google, the cliche that every search
returns porn was actually pretty true.

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arasakik
I remember using Altavista, Excite, WebCrawler and Yahoo simultaneously in
order to find what I wanted.

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juanpablo
Me too. Or one of those multi-engine search sites (Copernicus?).

One day, I decided to try Google. I remember having thought _"Humm, this seems
to be slightly better. I'll use it for a while"_

Sometimes it seems incredible that it was only 10 years ago.

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zandorg
Ditto, I found Google in about 1998, from a multi-engine search site and
noticed it was coming up with all the good stuff. I must have been one of the
first people to use it (at the time).

Additional note that most other search engines were a test of pain before
Google came along.

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aswanson
Infoseek, believe it or not, was damn good. Almost on a par with G back then.

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run4yourlives
I used to use hot-bot. I found they brought back the best results.

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ardit33
hotbot was awesome, especially for pirated stuff (songs and games). If you
were a starving student, it helped finding entertainment for free.

