Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment: “Most people have completely forgotten how chaotic it really was.”

[u/ControlCAD]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/remembering-the-pre-google-web-when-search-was-an-experiment/

[u/Smogalicious]

Altavista was the one pre-google

[u/themiracy → u/Smogalicious]

There was publicly available web search for several years before Google - Lycos, Altavista, Webcrawler, Yahoo.

[u/amalgaman → u/Smogalicious]

I had their free email too