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WOF: What search engine did you use before Google?
There's no denying Google's dominance in the search engine market. The Mountain View giant currently holds somewhere between 80-90% of the global search market, depending on where you get your numbers, and is almost as dominant in the U.S. alone with a 66% share, according to the latest comScore report. It's become so present in our lives that the word 'google' itself is commonly used as a verb and has even made it to the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
Besides carrying one of the world's most powerful brands, for many of us Google also drives the technology behind our email, instant messaging, calendar, mapping tool and whatnot. Not bad for a company with little over 10 years of life, many of us have been surfing the web longer than that. Which brings the question: Speaking specifically of web search, what were you using before Google came along? Or if you don't rely on Google today, what's your preferred search engine?
For me it was mostly Altavista, but before that I also used to check Lycos, HotBot, WebCrawler and the Yahoo Directory.
User Comments: 112
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Yahoo.
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Yahoo until a friend of mine show me a page than looked stupid and with a funny name called Google.
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Cota said:
Skyne... Google, then Altavista and switched back to Google
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treeski said:
I... honestly can't remember if I used anything before Google or not. I can't remember if I ever searched for anything. For now, Bing is my default search engine. I still use Google occasionally, especially when I just need more results on whatever I'm looking for (often programming stuff).
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TD25x said:
Dogpile and excite
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Metacrawler and Dogpile for me
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Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista ><
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yowanvista said:
None
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I didn't use internet before Google, so, Google.
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Mizzou said:
Webcrawler, had the little spider logo back then.
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i was using IE search bar from the left side
dont know what search it used,, i was too little, but after i found out google, dreams came true got my cheats for games etc.. -
tengeta said:
I used just about everything that existed before Google, in fact I still use Dogpile today.
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Altavista ...
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spikester48661 said:
yahoo and google but its all bing at distime for me
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I've always used yahoo.
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I first started using Dogpile. I then moved on to Ask Jeeves. I now use Yahoo! I like the customizable My Yahoo page much better.
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I first started using Dogpile. Used hotbot for quite some time, I then moved on to Ask Jeeves. I now use Yahoo! I like the customizable My Yahoo page much better.
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That was so long ago, I think it was just internet explorer =/
I really like Google.
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I think I used Altavista the most. I had tried Excite, Lycos, Hotbot and Yahoo for brief periods of time.
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I very rarely use google. I used Yahoo for years, and then Bing. My IE9 default search provider is Bing.
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MaXtor said:
I used AltaVista before Google.
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combination of altavista and yahoo
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"back in the day"....Gopher is what I used
Then yahoo, altavista and a couple others.
Now it's 50-50 between bing & google.
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Trillionsin said:
Umm.. what did I use? I dont know.. I think Google erased any memories of other searchers from my brain.
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I remember typing the word "fart" into Ask Jeeves at school once...That's the only memory i have before Google.
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