Finding stuff online: 20 years of innovative search engines

What would the Internet be without a way to find something specific on its millions of sites? Search engines started providing that function two decades ago. Here are some of the landmarks, from Archie to AltaVista to Google and Bing.

The Search Is On



Twenty years ago today, a student at McGill University and some friends launched what many people consider to be the world's first Internet search engine: Archie. Archie indexed FTP sites in the days before the Web became popular.

Since then, search has grown to dominate the Web, because people have always needed to know what's out there. Let's take a look back at the early days of many popular search engines by viewing authentic early screenshots.

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