

Google brought back oldest available index for their 10th birthday - wave
http://www.google.com/search2001.html#

======
jrockway
When I search for Perl, it seems like nothing has changed. When I click
through to Perl.com and look at the archived articles, they look like they all
could have been written today.

I'm not sure what this says about anything, but it is interesting.

~~~
staunch
I'm pretty sure this is meaningless as well, but interesting:

Then

    
    
      2,730,000 for asp code
      2,450,000 for java code
      1,730,000 for php code
      1,710,000 for perl code
      276,000 for python code
      224,000 for lisp code
      89,600 for ruby code
      9,580 for erlang code
    

Now

    
    
      64,700,000 for php code
      25,700,000 for asp code
      15,500,000 for java code
      1,540,000 for perl code
      1,390,000 for erlang code
      1,160,000 for python code
      711,000 for ruby code
      484,000 for lisp code

~~~
jrockway
There are actually _fewer_ Perl sites now. That is sad :(

------
jbenz
"Your search - _youtube_ \- did not match any documents."

What a crazy world we lived in.

~~~
technoguyrob
Some other fun ones:

 _Your search - "sarah palin" - did not match any documents._ Makes me anxious
that she is a vice presidential contender.

Top result for "iraq war" is a historical note on the Iran-Iraq War
(1980-1988).

Top result for "myspace" is an online storage portal (a whopping free 50MB).

"LCD" refers to a webcomic, not an LCD display.

Top result for "china" is a web page whose title is "New Page 1".

And of course ycombinator is nowhere to be heard of. :)

~~~
ericwaller
I thought this one was pretty interesting:

osama bin laden - excerpt from the first hit:

 _Bin Laden has vowed to wage a jihad or holy war against U.S. forces in Saudi
Arabia because of U.S. support for Israel. He broadened his threat to include
all Americans, military and civilian, in the Middle East._

and

 _The terrorist said, "We predict a black day for America."_

------
BrandonM
The fifth result when searching for "wikipedia" has the text:

"WikiPedia is a new wiki site I have set up at <http://www.wikipedia.com/> .
WikiPedia is an offshoot project of NuPedias OpenContent encyclopedia
project."

There are only 681 results (3 pages), and all of the Internet Archive links go
nowhere.

~~~
gojomo
Some differences in how the Google index and IA crawls handled redirects and
canonicalization may make it a little harder to click-through to the archives
Wikipedia pages, but they're available. Try:

[http://web.archive.org/web/2001/www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?W...](http://web.archive.org/web/2001/www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Wikipedia)

...or...

[http://web.archive.org/web/2001*/http:/www.wikipedia.com/wik...](http://web.archive.org/web/2001*/http:/www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?*)

...or to see pages beginning 'J'...

[http://web.archive.org/web/2001*/http:/www.wikipedia.com/wik...](http://web.archive.org/web/2001*/http:/www.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?J*)

[FYI: I work at the Internet Archive.]

------
aswanson
_The only product in our roundup that is solely vendor-hosted, Viaweb Store
3.0 shines brightly amid the e-commerce crowd. You don't have to install any
..._

[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=viaweb&hl=en&#...</a>

------
DaniFong
Weapons of Mass Destruction, Iraq:
[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=Weapons+of+Mass+De...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=Weapons+of+Mass+Destruction+Iraq&btnG=Search)

I have to say, for what it's worth, this data looked pretty worrisome...

------
slater
Want to buy or sell a used copy of On Lisp?
[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=%22Paul+...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=%22Paul+Graham%22&btnG=Google+Search)

------
agotterer
Hmm. This doesn't work for me. A search for anything takes me to a 404 not
found.

~~~
zandorg
That's because of the web's ever-popping foam of bubbles, to quote Ted Nelson.
The web's main feature is a lack of permanency, because people either
unpublish, have to pay for hosting which becomes economically unviable, or
host for 'free' until the free host gets bought out and deleted.

~~~
zandorg
Hang on, same result for me. You mean there's a 404 to the search query, not
the resulting link. Odd!

------
markbao
For those of you who have seen Startup.com:

<http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=govWorks>

also, <http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=webvan> and
<http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=kozmo>

------
tlrobinson
It's got the website I made in high school, but the Internet Archive only has
the text of the main page, no images :(

I wish they had my very first "webpage" from elementary school, which was just
one of those AltaVista or GeoCities things where you fill out a form
(basically the predecessor of social network "profiles", without the network)

------
krishna2
Search for "SEO" brings up this :
[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=seo&hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=seo&hl=en&btnG=Search)

First hit : Welcome to the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity Web Site

They practically later defined that market.

------
pchristensen
Ha! Joel on Software was at <http://joel.editthispage.com/>

------
blogimus
_al qaeda_ turns up 1,670 results back in 2001, (Today is 20,400,000) and the
first hit is for a Frontline episode on "Who is Bin Laden?"

[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=al+qaeda&hl=en...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=al+qaeda&hl=en&btnG=Search)

------
Haskell
1\. Searching in 2001 for: altavista google, the 3rd result is: "AltaVista
launches Google competitor"

2\. Searching in 2008 for: google facebook, the 3rd result is: Google’s
Response to Facebook: "Maka-Maka"

If history can teach something, Google's future is doomed. :)

------
byrneseyeview
[http://web.archive.org/web/20010413020517/www4.enron.com/cor...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010413020517/www4.enron.com/corp/jobs/)

"From stock options to 3 weeks of vacation--all the benefits that Enron
employees enjoy."

------
pius
Impressive . . . they decided to forgo search driven ad revenue for the day.

~~~
iamdave
Call it irony, but I think this produces higher quality results than paid
results.

Interesting little quirk, search for 'gmail' and look at the results.
Nostalgia of proportions only a true geek would appreciate.

~~~
pius
haha.

You know, I didn't appreciate the magnitude of what they did until trying out
your suggestion. I didn't realize that they'd literally gone back to the old
search index . . . I thought it was just a superficial change.

~~~
bootload
_"... I didn't appreciate the magnitude of what they did until trying out your
suggestion ..."_

Try "Al-Qaeda".

The index is pegged at ~= 9mth prior to 911. I know it's of questionable taste
but it's an interesting exercise to see what public information google
indexed. Or try
[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=pixar+Wa...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?hl=en&q=pixar+Wall.e)

~~~
staunch
[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=%22Osama+Bin+Laden...](http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=%22Osama+Bin+Laden%22&hl=en&btnG=Search)

Totally interesting.

~~~
bootload
_"... Bin+Laden... Totally interesting ..."_

Bin Laden is interesting all right. By '99 he was #456 on the FBI's most
wanted list ~
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Ten_Most_Wanted_Fugitives,_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Ten_Most_Wanted_Fugitives,_1990s#Osama_bin_Laden)
and now on the Tango watchlist ~
<http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm>

------
timcederman
iPhone?

[http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=iphone&hl=en&#...</a>

~~~
staunch
4th hit "Cisco - iPhone Support"

Explains the settlment:
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/22/business/cisco.php>

~~~
serhei
10th hit:

> iPhone

> The revolutionary iPhone is a fully integrated telephone and Internet device
> with a built-in touch screen to bring the world of the Internet into your
> home ...

> <http://www.uioa.com/productcatalog/> \- View old version on the Internet
> Archive

Wait, what??

------
truebosko
Man 2001, feels so long ago. That was the year I finally got internet at home,
and a few months later I built my first website on Geocities. Damn you Google,
making us feel nostalgic.

------
nuclear_eclipse
Search for "Bush":

"George W. Bush is running for President of the United States to keep the
country prosperous."

"George W Bush -- not a crackhead!"

------
rudyfink
Searching for "financial bailout" brings up links on the Russian bailout
question years ago. Everything old is new again!

------
mixmax
I actually got results when searching for myself :-)

What a bunch of crap I wrote back then...

~~~
davidw
dot.com me:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20011107114829/www.efn.org/~david...](http://web.archive.org/web/20011107114829/www.efn.org/~davidw/jpg.html)

~~~
mixmax
Thanks, I feel better now

:-)

------
proximo
There is an older index. Why does no one use The Way Back Machine?

[http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/google.stanford.ed...](http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/google.stanford.edu/)

Perhaps this is when Google became google.com?

~~~
kylec
Google's index is the crawling information they gathered. You can actually do
searches and get results as they would have been 7 years ago. The WayBack
Machine just caches the HTML pages and would not provide this functionality.

~~~
zandorg
Briefly in 2004, the Wayback Machine provided a search engine for its entire
archive, back to about 1997. This is now gone. Probably Amazon didn't like it
(Amazon owns Alexa and thus controls the WM caching).

------
mattmaroon
Wow, I was ungoogleable back then.

------
abl
google! - "yahoo!" wanna-be? :)

------
visakhcr
Search for iPod gives this as 1st result: " Image Proof of Deposit Document
Processing System" <http://www.aperta.co.uk/ipod.htm>

But the 3rd result is interesting...Page title - 'iPod' !!
<http://www.vrex.com/apps/html/ipod.html> (page cannot be found..anyone knows
what is this iPod?)

------
lst
Bootstrapping it: 3,780,000 versus 2,860,000,000

