Chapter 3, Search Before Google Summary

Before the World Wide Web, the Internet exists as a relatively small public network used by computer-savvy people. Knowing FTP (File Transfer Protocol) line commands is necessary to retrieve files off of the early Internet. The trouble with this early scheme is that the Internet user has to know the exact IP (Internet Protocol) address or DNS (Domain Name Services) name of the server that holds files of interest.

In 1990, Alan Emtage creates Archie, the first Internet search engine, as a solution to this basic problem. Archie works like modern search engines, consisting of a crawler, an index and a command-line interface. This is enough for the users of the time, mostly college students, professors and computer-savvy professionals. In 1993, the Veronica search engine is created at the University of Nevada, but while Archie is based on FTP...