5 ms·

I can totally second this as someone who began surfing web in 1997 as a university student. Content discovery was next to non-existent. You had these directori

I can totally second this as someone who began surfing web in 1997 as a university student. Content discovery was next to non-existent. You had these directories like Y! or Lycos which more or less mirrored yellow pages. My group of friends would exchange interesting site links over e-mail, floppy disk or the good old way, write them down in a note book. Before you ask, internet surfing was only available in expensive public kiosks so browser book marks weren't of much use. Only when I got my own PC + internet in 2000 did I began using browser bookmarks. And then Google became popular around 2002 just when I entered post-graduation and changed web surfing forever.

janlaureys 6y ago
This brought back a long lost memory of when before we had internet at home. My dad took me to an internet cafe and I had printed a whole list beforehand of sites I wanted to visit. I had just guessed a bunch of random domain names based on my interests and things I thought would have a cool website. Stuff like porshe.com, titanic.com, mountainbiking.com, spaceshuttle.com.
hnlmorg 6y ago
People were commonly using Lycos and Yahoo as search engines by 1997. Sure, some of the more exciting content wasn’t stuff you’d think to search for and thus would often get shared via word of mouth (like the “Bert is evil” site that parodied the Sesame Street character in compromising photos...after all, which sane persons would search “Bert +hitler” ?) I think the limited time many people had on the internet (as you said, in some instances at Internet kiosks where you’d be limited to an hour at a time. Or on expensive dial up) probably contributed to people curating and sharing links offline between friends. But I do remember using search engines in that era specifically because AltaVista was widely regarded between myself and my peers to be the best search engine in terms of keyword syntax and the accuracy of the results. Remember this was the era before search engines popularised entering in natural language as a search query. Ask Jeeves (later renamed to just “Ask”) was actually the first to popularise that and even that was pre-2000 (it also largely sucked compared to keyword driven queries but I guess the tech wasn’t quiet there yet). I think it was 1999 when my friends and I first discovered Google. Back then Google was keyword query based too. The natural language side of Google came much later (mid-2000s at a guess). But what sold Google was its minimalist home page and the accuracy of its results. The minimalist home page was novel because search engines were considered internet portals before Google. Yahoo! Would have online games, chat rooms, site recommendations and email all accessible from its landing page and it was a similar story for many of the other search engines as well. They considered themselves the homepage of the internet (and in many ways they were right). Whereas Google went the opposite way and said “let’s strip as much guff from our landing page as possible” and is modem uses really welcomed that (plus the accuracy of its results too). It’s ironic just how heavy Google’s landing page has become. By 2000 the web had already felt like it had shifted from its adolescent years of anything goes and was starting to grow up. The stigma of meeting strangers online was fading and businesses were adopting the web as more than just a niche marketing tool - in part helped by Online payments becoming a thing with PayPal, WorldPay etc.
- nickelcitymario 6y ago
  > Yahoo! Would have online games, chat rooms, site recommendations and email all accessible from its landing page and it was a similar story for many of the other search engines as well. They considered themselves the homepage of the internet (and in many ways they were right). Still a winning business model, because this line could easily describe Facebook.
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    That’s more a symptom of the lifestyle of any popular software project than it is an example of it being a winning business model. Time and time again you see these big monolithic applications get displaced by newer more focused applications and people love them because these newer applications run faster / is easier to use / etc etc. Then as those applications gain popularity new features need to be built to continue growth. Whether it is through feature requests, to fight off competitors with other features, or just the businesses way of finding new ways to look individuals into a walled garden....soon this focused application becomes yet another behemoth that people start to moan about. Eventually something new, shiny and focused grabs the public’s attention and we flock to that like the fickle herd of pack animals that we are.
- chx 6y ago
  If memory serves, we started searching on AltaVista, moved to Northern Light and then to Google. Certainly directories played a role but really, AltaVista / NL was the bees knees.
LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
Speaking of yellow pages, I had an Internet-specific yellow pages, I think it came from an order from Outpost.com. It was a physical book, just like the original phone book. I think I still have it, and if I can find it I'll reply with details. It was fantastic for finding things, because you could explore it, and because search was garbage back then.

janlaureys 6y ago

This brought back a long lost memory of when before we had internet at home. My dad took me to an internet cafe and I had printed a whole list beforehand of sites I wanted to visit. I had just guessed a bunch of random domain names based on my interests and things I thought would have a cool website. Stuff like porshe.com, titanic.com, mountainbiking.com, spaceshuttle.com.

hnlmorg 6y ago

People were commonly using Lycos and Yahoo as search engines by 1997. Sure, some of the more exciting content wasn’t stuff you’d think to search for and thus would often get shared via word of mouth (like the “Bert is evil” site that parodied the Sesame Street character in compromising photos...after all, which sane persons would search “Bert +hitler” ?) I think the limited time many people had on the internet (as you said, in some instances at Internet kiosks where you’d be limited to an hour at a time. Or on expensive dial up) probably contributed to people curating and sharing links offline between friends. But I do remember using search engines in that era specifically because AltaVista was widely regarded between myself and my peers to be the best search engine in terms of keyword syntax and the accuracy of the results. Remember this was the era before search engines popularised entering in natural language as a search query. Ask Jeeves (later renamed to just “Ask”) was actually the first to popularise that and even that was pre-2000 (it also largely sucked compared to keyword driven queries but I guess the tech wasn’t quiet there yet). I think it was 1999 when my friends and I first discovered Google. Back then Google was keyword query based too. The natural language side of Google came much later (mid-2000s at a guess). But what sold Google was its minimalist home page and the accuracy of its results. The minimalist home page was novel because search engines were considered internet portals before Google. Yahoo! Would have online games, chat rooms, site recommendations and email all accessible from its landing page and it was a similar story for many of the other search engines as well. They considered themselves the homepage of the internet (and in many ways they were right). Whereas Google went the opposite way and said “let’s strip as much guff from our landing page as possible” and is modem uses really welcomed that (plus the accuracy of its results too). It’s ironic just how heavy Google’s landing page has become. By 2000 the web had already felt like it had shifted from its adolescent years of anything goes and was starting to grow up. The stigma of meeting strangers online was fading and businesses were adopting the web as more than just a niche marketing tool - in part helped by Online payments becoming a thing with PayPal, WorldPay etc.

nickelcitymario 6y ago
> Yahoo! Would have online games, chat rooms, site recommendations and email all accessible from its landing page and it was a similar story for many of the other search engines as well. They considered themselves the homepage of the internet (and in many ways they were right). Still a winning business model, because this line could easily describe Facebook.
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  That’s more a symptom of the lifestyle of any popular software project than it is an example of it being a winning business model. Time and time again you see these big monolithic applications get displaced by newer more focused applications and people love them because these newer applications run faster / is easier to use / etc etc. Then as those applications gain popularity new features need to be built to continue growth. Whether it is through feature requests, to fight off competitors with other features, or just the businesses way of finding new ways to look individuals into a walled garden....soon this focused application becomes yet another behemoth that people start to moan about. Eventually something new, shiny and focused grabs the public’s attention and we flock to that like the fickle herd of pack animals that we are.
chx 6y ago
If memory serves, we started searching on AltaVista, moved to Northern Light and then to Google. Certainly directories played a role but really, AltaVista / NL was the bees knees.

LgWoodenBadger 6y ago

Speaking of yellow pages, I had an Internet-specific yellow pages, I think it came from an order from Outpost.com. It was a physical book, just like the original phone book. I think I still have it, and if I can find it I'll reply with details. It was fantastic for finding things, because you could explore it, and because search was garbage back then.