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2001: A search odyssey
September 30, 2008
Now that we're a decade old, we figured we're long overdue for some spring cleaning. We started digging around our basement and found all kinds of junk: old
Swedish fish
,
pigeon poop
,
Klingon
translation books. Amazingly enough, hidden in a corner beneath Larry's and Sergey's original lab coats, we found a vintage search index in mint condition. We dusted it off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001. "
iPod
" did not refer to a music player, "
youtube
" was nonsense, and if you were looking for "
Michael Phelps
," chances are you meant the scientist, not the swimmer. "
Wikipedia
" was brand new. Remember "
hanging chads
"? (And speaking of that election-specific reference -- if you're a U.S. citizen, it's not too late: please
register to vote
.)
We had so much fun searching that we wanted to put this old index online for everyone to play with. We thought it'd be even cooler if we could actually see the full versions of the old web pages, so we worked with the
Internet Archive
to link to their cache of these pages from 2001. Step into the time machine and try a
2001 Google search
.
For more information on this search, please read our
FAQ
.
Posted by Shirin Oskooi, Product Manager
Labels
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
58
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
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