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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.
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User Comments (112)
Post a comment|
Nima304
on February 4, 2011 8:13 PM |
I've never used anything before Google. Heil Google! |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:15 PM |
Combination of Yahoo!, Hotbot, and Infoseek. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:19 PM |
Metacrawler ftw! |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:22 PM |
Same here, Google is King. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:23 PM |
All Hail Google!!! |
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Kibaruk
on February 4, 2011 8:23 PM |
Altavista |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:24 PM |
AltaVista until summer 1999 - then Google |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:29 PM |
Still using Metacrawler. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:33 PM |
I used to use Dogpile |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 8:43 PM |
Lycos ---- |
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Tekkaraiden
on February 4, 2011 9:25 PM |
Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Metacrawler, Dogpile and whatever microsoft had before Bing. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 9:35 PM |
yahoo then google |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 9:42 PM |
AltaVista until summer 1999 - then Google ...ditto |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 9:46 PM |
yahoo i think, after i found google ive used them ever since ^^ google is the best! ^^ |
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Julio Franco
on February 4, 2011 9:56 PM |
For some reason Yahoo never appealed to me, so before Google I mostly relied on Altavista and Infoseek. I remember at one point there was no single search engine that delivered usable results for all queries, so I had to stumble back and forth until something good came up. Then Google came along and I never looked back, though to be honest as much as the I love instant search, I hate the screenshots that go along when you hover over results. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 10:11 PM |
Altavista too. |
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hitech0101
on February 4, 2011 10:28 PM |
Yahoo & askjeeves besides Google but first was Google as it was default on my browser. |
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matrix86
on February 4, 2011 10:36 PM |
Ask Jeeves was my main search engine, though I occasionally used Yahoo. After reading this article, I went and visited ask.com for the first time since Google came out.....boy has it changed, lol. I can't believe they got rid of Jeeves...the butler of the search engine :P |
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gooderguy
on February 4, 2011 11:25 PM |
I used several like AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Yahoo, and then when Dogpile came out and combined many of those I started using it. Wow, just now for the heck of it I tried all those search sites and they are still all there, just one changed names, it's been so long. |
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Guest
on February 4, 2011 11:36 PM |
Excite was the bomb!! |
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Lurker101
on February 5, 2011 12:23 AM |
Yahoo, Hotbot and AltaVista |
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Ssendi
on February 5, 2011 12:31 AM |
Aol was very common by then!!! then Msn because Hotmail was my first email hence msn used to be my home page!!! |
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milford50
on February 5, 2011 12:46 AM |
I used to use Ask Jeeves mostly, miss the Richie rich butler |
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mario
on February 5, 2011 12:59 AM |
AltaVista, I liked it because it had a simple interface. |
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WinXPert
on February 5, 2011 1:14 AM |
altavista and lycos |
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