I was ~8 years old when the search engine wars were going on. Even as close to the "pre-google" age as I was, I literally cannot conceive of existence without it nor fathom how difficult some (relatively basic) things must've been.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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Every single band had their own website, and email addresses. And every candy, pop or snack had to have a poorly made flash game or two.
Lifesavers had some good Flash and Shockwave games
This is not something I woke up today expecting to come across.
Talk about a very specific deep pull from a liminal space in space and time, kudos, sir!
Remember stick death?
If you've seen it how could you forget lol
People pulled map pages out of a phone book and marked them up to take with them if they needed to find a new location in town.
I was in my teens during the "search engine wars," and I distinctly remember my elementary school librarian showing off the brand new computerized card catalog when I was in kindergarten. Ran on a Mac. They gave up trying to teach us how to use a card catalog at some point in middle school; I'm not convinced they bothered putting one in the library for the newly built middle school that opened in 2000.
You just followed links or guessed web addresses.
When I finally discovered "www" was just a subdomain I was stumped.
Also open directories were a big thing where a webserver just showed a list of public files instead of a website.
I never understood this, I was around before the days of the Internet but that doesn't change the fact that this made no sense, how is it easier to go rummage through cards to try and find what you are looking for than just walk through the hallway full of carefully organized books with large titles and pictures on the front?
A book might be listed under multiple subjects or authors but cannot be shelved in multiple places. You can use the card catalog to find such a book because it can be represented by a card under multiple subjects or authors.
It might be because I could walk through my entire small town library in 10 minutes but the only thing I found less useful than those overwhelming cards is the ridiculous search engine they finally got
Username checks out? 😅🙇🏼♂️
How did you find the book if it was checked out? Find it in the cards and then place a hold for when it was returned.
It also allowed for inter-library loans within a library system. One index file for the entire library system and then you could request books from other libraries.
I didn't, I just assumed they didn't have it and 9 times out of a hundred I would be right because it was such a small library with such little traffic.
9 times out of a hundred I would be right
:D
I know how to use those AMA.
Why ask, when I could consult the Dewey Decimal System?
Does your back and/or knees hurt?
Is the outlook decimal?
People tend to forget that computers and digitization already were a thing before the widespread use of the internet.
During my youth in the late 80s, early nineties you would typically use DOS-based local search, sometimes even locally networked already.
Wood-pulp based search still was present, but mainly as a fallback when the limited number of search terminals were all occupied.
Aside from that, the meme is quite acurate though... 😊
How to say you were not alive when the Web was young. :-)