[ih] The web as wind and whirlwind? (was Re: History from 1960s to 2025)

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Sat Dec 20 12:00:52 PST 2025


On 12/20/2025 11:47 AM, Barbara Denny via Internet-history wrote:
> Do you feel the creation of Archie, first search engine in 1990, helped, or was necessary for,  the success of the World Wide Web?

In 1990, when I was teaching a TCP/IP class and included a demo of 
gopher, there was a hierarchy of pages that were organized by 
geography.  So we could start at the top, choose a region of the globe, 
then sub-section, and so on. Categorization is a form of pre-selected 
searches.

And while Archie search FTP, Veronica searched gopher.

So, yeah, search was fundamental (and inevitable) to utility, in the 
face of  Internet scaling.

d/

ps.  You didn't indicate how Tim responded.

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social



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