In the Pre-google days of the internet you used to have to play "search engine bingo" to find useful results I remember jumping between Lycos, Metacrawler, Altavista and Infoseek and it was still a coin flip if you would get useful results.
Search engines used to require you to use Boolean operators "+" "AND" "OR" "NOT" to filter search results. My high school library had a laminated card next to the internet connected PC (via dial up modem) explaining how Boolean operators worked and with suggested search engines to use (this was around 1996/1997).
The eye opener to me was my high school class was given an assignment to write about the upcoming "G8 Summit", Russia had just joined the G7 creating the G8 and it was a big news story at the time. I can remember how frustrating it was to find any results searching for things required constructing strings like "G+8+Summit OR Group+of+8+Summit"etc in sites like infoseek and still getting nonsense results. I found the information I needed to complete the assignment by going to public library which had copies of various daily newspapers archived I basically quoted newspaper articles to complete the assignment and concluded the internet was useless for finding information. I complained about my situation at home and my Dad Casually mentioned have you tried "google.com" next ay at school I typed "G8 Summit" into google and immediately got relevant results. I was a convert to google immediately it was so far ahead of every other search engine at the time it was like night and day.
I was pretty fortunate. My Dad was a veterinarian who taught himself to program (in Pascal) he knew a lot about a certain era of computing - early 90's MS-DOS 386 era PC's. His tech skills kind of atrophied and stagnated he never really adopted to the Win 9x gui first era of computing but he still had his ear to the ground enough to tip me off about google.
My father thought computers were tools for secretaries - on which he looked down - and could not fathom why on earth it was interesting to me. Then he babbled about the one Fortran class he had to take at university, how backward those punch cards were and how he basically learned nothing. When a computer finally entered the house, I was so exited. The first thing I did was installing a copy of a programming language I got from a teacher and I was very proud to show my father. My father literally threw a tantrum. I basically had anti-mentorship. For the longest time my dream was to be unlike my father.
Search engines used to require you to use Boolean operators "+" "AND" "OR" "NOT" to filter search results. My high school library had a laminated card next to the internet connected PC (via dial up modem) explaining how Boolean operators worked and with suggested search engines to use (this was around 1996/1997).
The eye opener to me was my high school class was given an assignment to write about the upcoming "G8 Summit", Russia had just joined the G7 creating the G8 and it was a big news story at the time. I can remember how frustrating it was to find any results searching for things required constructing strings like "G+8+Summit OR Group+of+8+Summit"etc in sites like infoseek and still getting nonsense results. I found the information I needed to complete the assignment by going to public library which had copies of various daily newspapers archived I basically quoted newspaper articles to complete the assignment and concluded the internet was useless for finding information. I complained about my situation at home and my Dad Casually mentioned have you tried "google.com" next ay at school I typed "G8 Summit" into google and immediately got relevant results. I was a convert to google immediately it was so far ahead of every other search engine at the time it was like night and day.