Google and the Net

[Ralph Seberry]

On Tuesday, 09 Oct 2001 at 23:40, Nomen Nescio <nobody at dizum.com> wrote:
> > >> Steve Mynott[SMTP:steve at tightrope.demon.co.uk] wrote:
> > >> Every thought how bad the net would be if google went away?
> > >>
> > > Actually, us old timers remember what it was like before google,
> >
> > Hypertext in general is doubleplus good.
> >
> > I remember Gopher, Archie, and all of those crufty tools.
> 
> You are all missing the point.  Google was being praised for its specific
> feature of acting as an internet-wide cache of old versions of web pages.

You cut out some lines:
> Actually, us old timers remember what it was like before google,
> or even altavista (the first real search engine). Heck, some of us
> remember what it was like before Usenet...

someone wrote about Altavista's cache of USENET back in '93.
Cypherpunkly issues of your past coming back to haunt you,
and blurring of private/professional identity followed.

As to how long google can be an archiver of the whole net...
altavista went about 6 years before its owner started looking
to sell it. And that didn't carry binary content. Now that's
owned by google as well.