Blog #4 Evolution of Technology: Internet Search

The History and Impact of Internet Search: EOTO

When thinking about technologies today, a search engine isn't really something that instantly comes to mind, but when I think about it I use internet search multiple times a day for all different things whether it's shopping, doing school work, or just looking for a response to a specific question. Internet search is a vital tool used very frequently by people of all ages throughout the world. Softwares started simple by just searching through a few files but has now become a brilliant engine that can answer any question involving any topic. 

The first search engine, “Archie,” was developed in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal Canada. “Archie” standing for archive came before the World Wide Web and searched only for file transfer protocol sites. 

A few years later Yahoo! launched in 1994 initially just as a directory of websites, but later incorporated search capabilities. 

With new engines slowly turning up then came the infamous Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford students, worked out of their dorm to build a search engine that deciphered and filtered the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web, naming that search engine Backrub. The structure of this search engine created by Page and Brin stood out because it was able to filter the importance of a web address by the link structure. This was highly effective and speedy which grabbed the attention of all users. 

By 1998 Google was born and contained about 60 million pages of information. The name came about by a misspelling of the term “googol,” which was supposed to represent the company's mission to organize a vast amount of information. Before Google took over being the main source of everything we could find on the web, there were website directories and indexed search engines that assembled searches by topic. Now, more than 70% of worldwide online search requests are handled by Google. 

In 2000 Google incorporated Ads into user search topics and placed target ads alongside search results continuing to scale the company's growth. 

Now Google has expanded from a powerful search engine to offering services like email and products like mobile devices and computers. Google is now worth $1.840 trillion and the world's fifth most valuable company. It is now using its large online presence to become a huge internet marketer, and buying out other companies like AdSense and acquiring all power in the mobile advertising category. 

Without the creation of any search engine, specifically Google, information would not be as accessible, education and research would not have become so remote, jobs have been created, and digital marketing continues to be vital for company growth. Internet search engines continue to evolve as users need to advance. The history I learned on the progress of internet searches goes to show the rapid growth technology has had and continues to each day. Now search engines don't just hold millions of data sources, but they offer voice search, personalization and ai integration.