Ask HN: What was the internet like before search engines?

3 points·tarikozket··5 comments

I believe search engines have changed the way we understand the internet: you ask something and you get something immediately.

What was the experience like before search engines? Does anyone have any stories?

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Imagine going down a Wikipedia hole where you're just clicking through a random path of links..

I kind of recall the mid 90s like that - while there were search engines, like lycos, AV etc.. for those who were early teens and not in a university exposure to word of mouth of what to check out could be more limited...

But curiosity always finds a way.

I'm a bit too young to have been online before search engines, but I do remember a time before search engines were generally useful.

Portals (Kind of like a human curated search engine), and bookmarking was way more important back then.

I also remember the local Library having (Pulp) books that featured interesting websites to visit.

There was a web page related to Mosaic that would list each day all newly created websites, maybe 5-10 of them. They had a form where website creators could submit their new domain/URL.

It took less time to read than looking at a daily facebook or twitter "newsfeed" -- and it was much more arresting.

So it was something similar to today's ProductHunt?

Are you asking about the Internet or the World Wide Web? The first search engine predates the Web. Anything remotely like the Web you know today has always had search engines.

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