It was actually how I discovered Google. I was a grad student at the time (English literature) and dreamed of accessing all the primary and secondary sources on a particular topic from the convenience of my own keyboard (still a pipe dream today). I cycled through every search engine I could find looking for one that would actually return results relevant to my search terms. I remember AltaVista being touted as one of the best but still failing to satisfy.
As soon as I read this New Yorker article, I checked out google.com and had that same eureka experience: finally, this is the one.
This 2000 New Yorker article does a pretty good job:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/05/29/search-and-dep...
It was actually how I discovered Google. I was a grad student at the time (English literature) and dreamed of accessing all the primary and secondary sources on a particular topic from the convenience of my own keyboard (still a pipe dream today). I cycled through every search engine I could find looking for one that would actually return results relevant to my search terms. I remember AltaVista being touted as one of the best but still failing to satisfy.
As soon as I read this New Yorker article, I checked out google.com and had that same eureka experience: finally, this is the one.