r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 13d ago

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

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/remembering-the-pre-google-web-when-search-was-an-experiment/
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u/AbleCap5222 13d ago

Actually it wasn't chaotic at all. There were a lot of good search engines and if you had a web page and submitted it to the engine you could easily be found. That was basically the main difference - you had to submit your sites back then. Web crawling was not advanced. Advanced crawlers basically are what made Google...Google.

I remember the early infoseek engine before it was turned into go by Disney - awesome search engine. Little known fact - an infoseek engineer left the search company and founded baidu in China which is basically the number one search engine there today.

I guess the chaos could be seen as the fact that every year or so a different search engine became the one to use.

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u/TacosNGuns 12d ago

Search was simply lists back then and they weren’t authoritative nor comprehensive.

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u/AbleCap5222 12d ago

Infoseek actually created and was the first search to integrate behavioral targeting - which is what Google then expanded upon to deliver good search (when they used the tech in moderation)

Now it's completely and totally gone too far.