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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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DogPile and MSN
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The public library.
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I think my search engine progressions was something like. Yahoo-->Google-->Bing/Google(with most of my searching being done on bing)
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Yahoo and mostly AltaVista, as lots of people I see here and wondering why it failed.
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Lokalaskurar said:
Before Google, I only used Altavista. Still, about 99% of my searches each day are performed using Google. And I've heared people used the term "google" for "searching the world wide web after desired content". I've even heard teachers say; "go google it if you're interested."
And I don't believe in minting the B.G. expression (Before Google), it's just silly :P
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I used Yahoo, but now google
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I used to use Yahoo. Then I joined Google's world domination scheme.
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Lycos, yahoo, and now google.
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mamma.com
altavista.com
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Altavista and Lycos
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I started using internet in 2000, and I used Altavista as I remember, then I used Yahoo, but sometimes around 2002-2003 I "converted" to Google and I'm still with them, though I still use my Hotmail address that I made in that distant year of 2000...
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lycos, yahoo, webcrawler and altavista
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i've used google so long, i think i was using Yahoo for search before it.
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Altavista, some yahoo, and then Google. simply the best!
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Ask Jeeves
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Altavista -> Lycos -> Yahoo! -> Google
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Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Webcrawler, Dogpile
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Used Altavista, MetaCrawler, Yahoo, & Ask Jeeves. As others have said I could never seem to find the answer to all my questions with one search engine, had to bounce back and forth between them to find everything I wanted.
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Had to think about it for a bit but I finally remembered it was Yahoo. Yahoo DID have the best porn searches from what I remember.
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Google all the way...
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All the Web before Yahoo "killed" it.
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"Momma" up until '96.
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Mamma (the mother of all search engines), AltaVista, MetaCrawler - 1998 to 1999
Yahoo - 1999 to 2002
Google - till now
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Altavista was the one I used.
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Used Altavista mostly until Google came along like many here.
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