Traffick: Look at the Funny Bell-Bottoms!: Search Engine Enlightenment

Remember when lava lamps were all the rage? Yes, I do too. It was only four years ago, back when Google was still an upstart.

A fascinating San Francisco Chronicle article from August, 2000, reveals the following tidbits:

"Google faces strong competition from the likes of AltaVista Co., the Palo Alto Web portal, and Inktomi Corp., the Foster City firm that licenses search technology to Web sites such as Lycos and America Online."

"Both companies dwarf Google in size and experience, but still feel threatened." (You don't say!)

The company had 120 employees, indexed 560 million web pages, and processed 14 million searches per day on its own website (partners accounting for another 26 million).

"One thing Google's executives say they will not do is transform their company into a Web portal. While the firm may add capabilities such as online image and music searches, according to its co-founders, it will stay away from calenders, news and chat." (Now they have news, of course. And email, which is one step away from calendars. And with Groups, blogs, and orkut, they're getting closer and closer to the world o' chat. Things change.)

Ah, 2000. Back when Martha Stewart was an innocent flower. When 911 was something you dialed on your phone. And Google didn't even have news, let alone a browser. They recently registered GBrowser.com. They allow publishers to display simple graphical banners in their advertising program, the one called "AdSense." We're not in Kansas anymore.

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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