I actually remember what the internet was like before search engines came along. It was about 30 minutes of getting a stable connection (assuming you didn't just get a busy signal), and then just an endless series of links nested within more links.
It was much less about finding what you wanted, and instead discovering things you either didn't know existed or didn't realize other people also like.
For better or worse, we can now get any piece of information we've ever desired with just a few simple strokes of the keyboard. A lot of the time, you don't even have to finish what you're typing, because the search engine predicts what you're looking for.
For a while, there were a bunch of search engines that competed — until Google came along. Sure, you can still use others today, but nobody says, "I'll just AltaVista that real quick."
Yet this tech giant was very nearly known by another name. Do you know what it was?
Click START to answer.
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Correct Answer: Backrub
The answer is: Backrub. What the heck even is a Google? It’s actually a misspelling of "googol" — something that's so nerdy even we have to raise our eyebrows. A googol is a really big number, referencing 1 followed by 100 zeroes. By referencing this number, the founders were referencing their mission “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” — and it’s a hell of a lot better than Backrub. Imagine the ripples in modern society we’d see if that name stuck...Source
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