Ask.com: What is Google?

I read the BBC article about the new Ask.com and thought I’d give it a try.

I thought I’d like to know a bit more about The Google and ‘asked’ Ask to tell me what Google is:

The top result says “They are bad. Dogpile. com is better. ihategoogle”. Would have even been funnier if it had said “They are bad. Ask.com is better.”!

But let’s see how Google itself answers that question:

“Google, a popular search engine, is a tool for finding resources on the World Wide Web. Google scans web pages to find instances of the keywords …”

Hmmm… that’s better!

But seriously, Ask.com is pretty cool. Great search results, pretty good search suggestions. I might even use it occasionally for general purpose search! Give it a try — you just might like it!

Google at 10: The real Google search page in 2001

Google is celebrating, well, 10 years of Google! In keeping with Google’s goofy ways of doing things, Google is allowing people to search its index from January 2001.

Go back in time and search the web as-it-was in January 2001!: http://www.google.com/search2001.html

But how did Google’s search page actually look in January 2001? Thanks to Internet Archive,one can easily find out! The earliest working archive from January 2001 is from 19th January.

Google search page in January 2001

Google.com in January 2001 -- the search box.

As you can see, Google was already ‘Feeling lucky’. The logo is missing from the Internet Archive page, but you can see Google’s 2001 logo in the ‘Google at 10′ Search 2001 page:

Google at 10, Search 2001 page.

Google has come a long way from indexing just 1.3 billion pages in January 2001. In fact, by December 2001, Google had indexed over 3 billion pages and added ‘Images‘, ‘Groups‘, and ‘Directory‘ search options. Google continues to be the leader in Internet search in the US and in many other search markets.

Google on CrunchBase.