Google Like It's 1998

By Marcus Yam
published

Google opens the door to the past, showing you what it was like 15 years ago.

This month Google turns 15 years old. That's pretty crazy when you think about where the company has gone from being the work of two Stanford students to now the internet monolith it is. Either way, it all started with search, and today we're treated to a bit of an easter egg that'll give you a blast from the past.

Go to Google and search for "google in 1998" and you'll see this:

Google has come a long way in the last decade and a half, and today blogged about many important new features its added since 1998.

 

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • fimbulvinter
    So google like they aren't sending all your data to intelligence agencies on the regular?

    Funny how "Do No Evil" became "Do Some Evil As Long As It's Secret".
    Reply
  • MANOFKRYPTONAK
    I can remember when Google came out :) I never thought they would have gotten so big..
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    11607540 said:
    So google like they aren't sending all your data to intelligence agencies on the regular?

    Funny how "Do No Evil" became "Do Some Evil As Long As It's Secret".
    All companies are subject to the whims of the governments whose jurisdictions they do business in. If you don't like what the NSA or other government agency is forcing them to do, then stop electing paranoid attention-whores.
    Reply
  • mapesdhs
    Of course now that search term doesn't work so well to find the
    easter egg, because of all the media sites that have made a
    reference to it, ie. irony being Google has itself indexed them,
    making it harder to find the egg. :D

    I remember when it was all Yahoo and AltaVista... and webcrawler.
    And before that, archie & gopher. Sheesh, makes me feel like a
    pensioner... :|

    Ian.

    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    I think it's hilarious that on the blog the "share across devices" feature shows three iPhones!
    Reply
  • icemunk
    I remember when Google appeared back in the day... I was using Alta Vista back then, but when Google came along, and had that super fast search, I jumped ship. It used to take 3-4 seconds, or more for Alta Vista, or Yahoo you crawl for the results, but in the day.. Google was able to make a leap forward and get results in 100ms or so, so it was really a big difference back then... and then they grew.. and grew, and grew...
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    11608481 said:
    11607540 said:
    So google like they aren't sending all your data to intelligence agencies on the regular?

    Funny how "Do No Evil" became "Do Some Evil As Long As It's Secret".
    All companies are subject to the whims of the governments whose jurisdictions they do business in. If you don't like what the NSA or other government agency is forcing them to do, then stop electing paranoid attention-whores.

    Yes they can be forced to give the data. However, they could have made a loud stink about it in public. Then fought a massive, lengthy and very public legal battle. At the same time removing all Google searches for government web sites.
    Reply