The Search Notes-Search before Google

Early Search Engines:
Archie, pre-Web search:

The honor of being the first Internet search engine goes to Archie, a pre-Web search application created in 1990 by a McGill University student named Alan Emtage. Archie sourced Internet-based archives ad built an index of each file it found. Based on the Internet's file transfer protocol standard, Archie's architecture was similar to most modern Web search engines-it crawled resources, built an index, and had a search interface. But the pre-Web era was not a very user-friendly time. Typical users would query the engine by connecting directly to an Archie server via a command-line interface. They would Archie via keywords though to be in a matching file's could be found. They then connected to that machine, and rummaged around till they found what they are looking for.

WWW Wanderer:

Belongs to a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Matthew Gray. He wrote the Wanderer to systematically traverse the Web and collect sites.

AltaVista.com:

Louis Monier, a researcher at DEC's Western Lab in Palo Alto, California, suggested building a search engine: it could load the entire Internet (the massive database) onto an Alpha computer, then build a program showcasing Alpha's speed. Presto-Alta Vista was born, a proof point to DEC's hardware dominance. Monier wanted to make sure AltaVista stayed pure - the best search on the Web. "A pencil," Monier called it - a tool that did one thing very, very well -- it's exactly the approach that catapulted Google to the top of the heap four years later. By 1997, AltaVista was truly king of Search. Serving more than 25 million queries a day and on track to make $50 million in sponsorship revenue, the company was in a three-way heat with Yahoo and AOL as most important destination on the Web.

Journey of AltaVista:

In January 1998, AltaVista moved in the hands of Compaq a Houston-based personal computer giant with absolutely no knowledge of the consumer Internet.

In less than two years Compaq sold Alta Vista to CMGI, a high-flying Internet holding company, for $2.3 billion in June 1999 then CMGI sold this to paid search innovator Overture Services, Inc, in 2003. Later Overture itself was later sold to Yahoo, which restored AltaVista to its original look: a search box, a blinking cursor, and scads of white space. But before that Monier, creator of the first Goolge, moved from the Alta Vista with 30 members of team and his experience, is now working at eBay, helping that commerce giant redesign.

Lycos.com

Lycos was created in May 1994 by CMU's Dr. Michael Mauldin, working under a grant from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA).

History behind the name "Lycos": It was derived from Lycosidae,the Latin word for the wolf spider family,whose members actively seek their prey rather than catching it in a web.

How it works:

Lycos deployed a spiderlike crawler to index the Web, but it used more sophisticated mathematical algorithms to determine the meaning of page and answer user queries. The crux of Lycos search technique was analysis of anchor text, or the description of outbound links on a Web page, to get a better idea of the meaning of the existing page. Lycos's introduced Webpage summaries in search results ,rather than a simple list of links.

For a short period in 1999,Lycos became the most popular online destination in the world. But in May 2000, Lycos was sold to Terra, a Spanish telecom giant. Four years later, Terra sold Lycos to a South Korean company.

Similarly like AltaVisa Lycos moved into couple of hands and today remains a top-twenty destination.

Excite:

Founded in 1994 by six Stanford University alumni. Excite began life under the name Architext. The company's original goal was to create search technology for large databases within corporations, but Vinod Khosla(person who funded Excite with $1.5 million ) encouraged the company to focus on the consumer Web.

Innovations from Excite:

Personalization - MyExcite was among the first services to allow users to create custom Web pages with news ,business information, and regional weather reports. In 1997, Excite became the first of the major portals to offer free e-mail.

Journey of Excite:

In 1998 every major search engine was in play ,and every one looking for merges and acquisitions. Excite had discussion with Yahoo, Google,AOL,Microsoft, and Lycos. According to both Khosla and Bullington, Excite was extremely close to closing the deal with Yahoo but another bidder came knocking on the Excite's door. When @Home, a broadband company owned by several major companies, made a richer offer to combine Excite with its @Home broadband Internet service. It's quite similar to Compaq was to Alta Vista and naturally Excite ended up in a very messy Chapter 11 proceeding.(bankruptcy)

Unbeknownst to them all, there was a giant vacuum left in search.

Yahoo Kick Off:(Yang and Filo)

Yahoo got its start when two bored Phd candidates at Stanford hacked together a system that helped them win a fantasy basketball league. In 1993, Mosaic, the first Web browser, launched and Yaung started obsessively surfing the web , noted all web lists which interested to him. Filo took note of Yang's passion and write some software which collects the list and puts in one web page.

YAHOO -Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle ,came by reveres engineering by way of acronym. Yang and Filo adopted directory approach to navigation -sorting links into categories like Arts, Science, Business, and so on.

Tim Koogle, Yahoo's first CEO, knew he was onto something when he met Yang and Filo in 1995. I saw great guys who were clearly in need of adult supervision ,Koogle tells. Both Filo, and Yang readily admit their lack of business expertise at the time, and welcomed experience of Koogle, who was a former Motorola executive.

Google Is Born:

Page read a biography of Nikola Tesla, one of history's most prodigious inventors. Telsa discovered or developed the foundational technologies for an astonishing array of innovations,from wireless communication and X rays to solar cells and the modern power grid.But despite his extraordinary invention,Telsa remains a minor figure in particular when compared to Thomas Edison, a man who Telsa worked for. The twelve-year-old Page was stuck with this fact:regardless of how brilliant and world-changing Tesla's work had been, the inventor received little long-term fame. After reading Telsa biography Page tells, I realized I wanted to invent things, but I also wanted to change the world. I wanted to get them out there, get them into peoples hands so they can use them, because that's what really matters.

The two others working with Page and Brin were Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg, graduate assistants who had been assigned to the project,Google. But Hassan and Steremberg ended up separating from the project before Google really took off. But even those missing Beatles started successful Internet companies. Hassan went on to found eGroups.com with Larryy's brohter,Carl Page, and later sold it to Yahoo for more than $500 million. Steremberg had already launched The Weather Under ground, a popular weather site, while an undergraduate at Michigan and still runs today.

The first version of Google released on the Stanford Web site in August 1996. Graduate students usually lack the money to buy new computers; Page and Brin were no exceptions. Instead they begged and borrowed - a hard drive from the network lab, an idle CPU from the CS loading docks. Using Page's dorm room as machine lab, they fashioned a computational Frankenstein from spare parts, then jacked the whole thing into Stanford's broadband campus network. After filling Page's room with equipment, the young students converted Brin's room into an office and programming center.

Initial Investment for Google Inc:

By late 1998, Google was serving more than ten thousand queries per a day, and it was clear to Page and Brin that the service would quickly outgrow their ability to beg resources to support it. David Cheriton (who heads Stanford's Distributed Systems Group) suggested Page and Brin meet with Andy Bectolsheim, a founder of Sun who was active in early-stage investments. Both of them met Andy and given demo, and Andy asked a lot of questions. Then he said: 'Well, I don't want to waste time. I'm sure it'll help you guys if I just write a check. Page and Brin weren't ready for such an offer, but when Bechtolsheim went out to his car to get his checkbook, they pondered how much to ask for and what valuation. But when Bechtolsheim returned, they told him their suggested valuation. Page picks up the story: "We told him our valuation, and he said 'Oh, I don't think that's enough, I think it should be twice that much." Brin and Page were stunned, but of course, they agreed, and Bechtolsheim asked who the check should be made out to. The founders hadn't settled on a name, so Bechtolsheim suggested Google Inc.,after the service's name. They agreed, and minutes later, Page and Brin had a check for $100,000.

The Early Years -Google first Office

Page kept the check in his dorm room desk for several weeks, as the founders went about forming the company and setting up back accounts. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. was formally incorporated, with Page as CEO and Brin as president. When Brin and Page hired their first employee-fellow student Craig Silvestein- they realized they needed to find office space. They found a temporary answer in Susan Wojciki, a friend of Sergey's girlfriend.