Search like it's 2001...

September 30, 2008 4:35 PM

To celebrate their 10th birthday Google have brought back their oldest available index dating back to 2001.
posted by HaloMan (110 comments total)

This is good.
posted by roll truck roll at 4:40 PM on September 30, 2008

sigh
posted by roll truck roll at 4:40 PM on September 30, 2008 [42 favorites has favorites]

The past really is another country.
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on September 30, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

And yet ...
posted by feelinglistless at 4:45 PM on September 30, 2008

They seem to be reducing their share prices to 2001 levels as well.
posted by Artw at 4:48 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

January, 2001: Results 1 - 10 of about 2,090 for "al qaida". (0.08 seconds)
September, 2008: Results 1 - 10 of about 9,730,000 for "al qaida" [definition]. (0.19 seconds)
posted by knave at 4:48 PM on September 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Out of odd curiosity I googled "September 11" and got nothing. I guess Google was living in a 9/10 world.

I have no idea what I'm saying.
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 4:50 PM on September 30, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

9/11 nevah pre-remembah!
posted by Artw at 4:51 PM on September 30, 2008 [12 favorites has favorites]

It was an innocent time.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 4:51 PM on September 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

also this

... crazy days
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 4:51 PM on September 30, 2008

sigh
posted by roll truck roll at 4:40 PM on September 30 [+] [!]

Well I guess we know the one "no experience" at least had a political career
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 4:54 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

No Achewood, no dailykos, and Blu-ray is a specialty printing service.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:54 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ron Paul Cyberspace Headquarters
Now located at www.ronpaulforcongress.com You will be transferred there now...
Pol. adv. paid for by the Committee to Re-Elect Ron Paul.
posted by maxwelton at 4:55 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The world was a much better place.
posted by maxwelton at 4:56 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Get outta here, Google. I thought I had buried those posts I made in high school to TMBG and Duke Nukem message boards forever.
posted by painquale at 4:57 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,670 for al qaeda
posted by bonaldi at 4:58 PM on September 30, 2008

Huh. So I suppose I need to go to the wiki to learn what "my.metafilter.com" was?
posted by maxwelton at 4:59 PM on September 30, 2008

same as it ever was
posted by breakfast_yeti at 5:00 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

sigh

On the other hand...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 5:01 PM on September 30, 2008

Nobody could have seen it coming. Oh, no, wait.
posted by flashboy at 5:04 PM on September 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Oh, to live in a more innocent time.
posted by tits mcgee at 5:04 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

wikipedia isn't the first hit for every search!
posted by ouchitburns at 5:13 PM on September 30, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

Other things nobody could have seen coming.

The Weather Channel - Vulnerable Cities: New Orleans
It's been 25 years since a major hurricane made direct hit on New Orleans. The
city has never felt the fury of a Category 4 or 5 storm. ...
posted by DU at 5:16 PM on September 30, 2008

whoa.
posted by potch at 5:16 PM on September 30, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

I did the same YouTube search, as well as ones for "Web 2.0" and "AJAX".

Next up: I scour an encyclopedia from 1860 for references to microchips, just so I can stand in amazement that they really didn't know about it then!
posted by DU at 5:17 PM on September 30, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Your search - youtube - did not match any documents.
posted by smackfu at 5:17 PM on September 30, 2008

sigh

Interesting that somebody already had a record in '01
posted by shunshine at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2008

innocent time, you say?
posted by ymgve at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

Great minds apparently think alike.
posted by smackfu at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2008

In 2001, I guess the new black was just...black.
posted by DU at 5:19 PM on September 30, 2008

DU: try "is the new black". much more depressing.
posted by potch at 5:21 PM on September 30, 2008

Jalal Talabani - 2010 hits
Dimitry Medvedev - 235 hits
Hamid Karzai - 95 hits
Mikheil Saakashvili - 62 hits
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 5:22 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh, man, I'd somehow managed to forget about my involvement in Playmaker Football.
posted by dersins at 5:23 PM on September 30, 2008

No joke: If you search for "mathowie", the first result is a coldfusion error.
posted by smackfu at 5:27 PM on September 30, 2008 [17 favorites has favorites]

I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted by Johnny Assay at 5:29 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

o rly
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:38 PM on September 30, 2008

Wow, that feels so much more recent to me... back then my username had no hits at all... my email address was a bored.com
posted by phrontist at 5:39 PM on September 30, 2008

"Google has", ty most likely a Briton OP.
posted by aerotive at 5:45 PM on September 30, 2008

I was pretty active on the Web back then, and had been for five years. Google returned 184 hits for my name in 2001.

Today? 9,400.

In another seven years, I fully expect to consume the Web.
posted by Astro Zombie at 5:50 PM on September 30, 2008

http://web.archive.org/web/20011212140211/www.cat-scan.com/Old/entries.html

How did Cat Butt. Fear it. never become a meme?
posted by rajbot at 5:50 PM on September 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

You know you can get up to 300MB free file storage on "myspace?"

But there has always been "tubgirl."
posted by maxwelton at 5:53 PM on September 30, 2008

Google's share price dove like it was 2001 today. Albeit a NASDAQ error.

320.50
-60.50 (-15.88%)
Sep 30 - Close
High: 488.43 52Wk High: 747.24
Low: 25.80 52Wk Low: 25.80

and that's from Google Finance.
posted by gman at 5:56 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Didn't anyone tell you there's a second web now?
You're living in the past, Man.
posted by mannequito at 6:01 PM on September 30, 2008

Would you like to see ships,airplanes,clouds or just Hudson river live??

Jesus.
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:01 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Results 1 - 10 of about 6,680 for gmail.
posted by gman at 6:01 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

"Google has", ty most likely a Briton OP.
British OP

There needs to be a law about the inevitability of grammarfarting while one is attempting to pedant it up.
posted by bonaldi at 6:06 PM on September 30, 2008

But already, Congress has doled out more than $9 billion in special earmarks for highly dubious and surely less than urgent projects never subjected to merit-based review. From killing aquatic weeds, breeding potatoes and renovating a statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, to lavishing millions of dollars in earmarked grants on well-off universities with multibillion-dollar endowments, the road to Washington remains, as always, paved with gold.

At least the guy stays on message.
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:15 PM on September 30, 2008

This is a national treasure that someone needs to spider.

Let's go back to a time when only eight people had used the term asshat.
posted by johngoren at 6:20 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

There needs to be a law about the inevitability of grammarfarting while one is attempting to pedant it up.

There is!
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 6:21 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

STILL better than Cuil.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:26 PM on September 30, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

Wow. A simpler time indeed.

(My husband and I couldn't resist having a vanity google-off: my full name in 2001 yielded 0 hits; my full name today yields about 32,000. My husband's name in 2001 yielded 3 hits; his name today yields around 650.)
posted by mothershock at 6:29 PM on September 30, 2008

From CatScan:

-Remember, folks, we're making ART here! The more interesting or original your scan is the more likely it is going to be posted. Try using props! Birds, mice, multiple cats, Christmas lights, Tin Foil, etc...

-Please don't put any text or graphics ON your scan.
posted by arcticwoman at 6:31 PM on September 30, 2008

iPod?
posted by roygbv at 6:34 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Whoa, Daring Book for Girls! A lot of the Boy book was good, but a few parts kind of icked me. So I loled, checked out (of the library--didn't buy, sorry) your book and felt a little better. So, errrr.....thanks?
posted by DU at 6:44 PM on September 30, 2008

(Which I just realized should have been a MeMail. Sorry everyone.)
posted by DU at 6:44 PM on September 30, 2008

Man, I like having 60 gigs and all, but those first gen. iPods really were the coolest, design-wise. I loved the actual-moving scroll wheel.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:48 PM on September 30, 2008

Man it was shitty-looking, the google! All white space! Where is mein RSS feeds?
posted by Mister_A at 6:50 PM on September 30, 2008

ohmygod, my frist web page was Teh Horrar! (I think SW Bell Yellow Pages built it for us, bevels, and all.)
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:51 PM on September 30, 2008

and then, there are some sites that have changed surprisingly little.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:54 PM on September 30, 2008

Ahhh dot-com bust memories

I loved being in business back then, it was all blue sky, burn rates and funky web culture.
posted by mattoxic at 6:55 PM on September 30, 2008

Nuttin'. Ah, for the days when goatse was the grossest thing out there...
posted by nosila at 6:56 PM on September 30, 2008

I got your RSS right here
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:57 PM on September 30, 2008

A link I found on Metafilter c. 2001: Chief aim of war is now to "avenge death of George Harrison" -Blair

LOLBLAIR. That guy is teaching at Yale.
posted by nosila at 7:01 PM on September 30, 2008

Upon review, I am dumb and apparently did not understand satire in 2001. I was only 20 and was, like, super honest about everything, okay?
posted by nosila at 7:04 PM on September 30, 2008

Heh.
posted by emelenjr at 7:11 PM on September 30, 2008

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:12 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is ridiculously fun and I'm not even sure why. Maybe it's because it's time travel.
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 7:23 PM on September 30, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

heh. Fortunately all my early websites seem to have slipped into oblivion or been overwritten by slightly less horrible versions.
posted by Artw at 7:27 PM on September 30, 2008

Wow. Vanity searching for me in 2001 was much better.. 9 of the 1st 10 results referred to me. Modern google only me 2 of 10. It's true then... I am less cool than when I was younger. :) For values of cool that include the internet, or in other words... not cool. Still number 1 though. Hazzah.

I like the link to archive.org as a replacement for the 'Cached' option. I actually stumbled on something I was looking for the other day that was no longer online. Neat.
posted by adamt at 7:46 PM on September 30, 2008

JoeX, damn, you beat me to it... still...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
posted by yoHighness at 7:50 PM on September 30, 2008

Wow, I searched for a Vietnam vet who married into money and didn't know how many houses he had and got John Kerry!
posted by mattholomew at 7:50 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The revolutionary iPhone is a fully integrated telephone and Internet device with a built-in touch screen to bring the world of the Internet into your home or office with the touch of your finger.
posted by salsamander at 7:53 PM on September 30, 2008

I wonder if they had burritos back in 2001?

They did!
posted by drjimmy11 at 7:55 PM on September 30, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

hm. this iphone link should work better.
posted by salsamander at 7:55 PM on September 30, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

JoeX, damn, you beat me to it... still...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

The Al Gore query is even more so frightening.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:59 PM on September 30, 2008

Anybody remember Alta Vista? That was my go-to search engine until one of my engineers showed me Google in '98. "Look at how much more this finds" he said. Been using it ever since.
posted by Rafaelloello at 8:03 PM on September 30, 2008

Yankees and Derek Jeter negotiating an amicable, long-term contract were dealt a severe blow on Thursday
posted by Rafaelloello at 8:14 PM on September 30, 2008

Results 1 - 10 of about 19,200 for "big truck". (0.10 seconds)

Results 1 - 7 of about 7 for "series of tubes". (0.01 seconds)

I miss that internet. They don't build it like they used to.
posted by 7segment at 8:23 PM on September 30, 2008

It was a simpler time.

Yeah, definitely.
posted by scabrous at 8:41 PM on September 30, 2008

I've been on the internet too long. My first website (geekrights.org) is listed there, but that version is about 4 or 5 years old.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:44 PM on September 30, 2008

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:12 PM on September 30

"The White House spacer President of the United States spacer White ..."

*grin*
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:46 PM on September 30, 2008

2001? 1996!
posted by tighttrousers at 9:22 PM on September 30, 2008

This is precisely the thing I've wanted to see ever since I first saw Archive.org's cache of the Google homepage. It really is a treasure unlocked, all the forgotten and hidden-away detritus of internet history made easily searchable once again. Amazing stuff.

But then again...

How long will this service be available?

One month. It's kind of lame to be celebrating a mid-September birthday in late October, don't you think?

Really, Google? Really? This is one of the coolest things you've ever done, a fascinating resource. And you're making it temporary?
posted by Rhaomi at 9:47 PM on September 30, 2008

I want to go back.
posted by mazola at 10:02 PM on September 30, 2008

McCain:
Then.
Now.
posted by Kickstart70 at 10:23 PM on September 30, 2008

There were only 76,400 results for the word "blog".
There were only 4.5 million results for the word "porn".
There were only 132,000 results for the word "wiki".
There were only 3.78 million results for the word "google".
There were only 63,700 results for the word "craigslist".
There were only 17,900 results for the word "metafilter".
posted by iamkimiam at 11:04 PM on September 30, 2008

Some more interesting results:

Our first black president

REMEMBER 9/11

2008
posted by Rhaomi at 11:14 PM on September 30, 2008

It seems like rather than enforcing the limitations we already have, they're just adding these new, more draconian laws. I mean, the WTC terrorist was on an expired student visa-- why didn't INS track him down when it expired and find out what he was still doing here?

posted by wiremommy at 10:01 AM on July 6, 2000

Heh.
posted by shii at 11:20 PM on September 30, 2008

My old university matriculation enrollment list is up there, along with my matriculation number, the class(es) I registered for, and my old university email ID. None of my grades or my later work-related stuff show up.

Sigh, innocent times indeed.
posted by the cydonian at 12:03 AM on October 1, 2008

back then my username had no hits at all.

Same here. It gave me a nostalgic thrill to see:

Your search - languagehat - did not match any documents.

...and remember that morning in 2002 when I googled the name that had come to me during the night and thought "Great, I've got it all to myself" and registered it with Blogger.

I share Rhaomi's annoyance that they're taking it down after a month. What a stupid thing to do.
posted by languagehat at 6:36 AM on October 1, 2008

Astro Zombie said: In another seven years, I fully expect to consume the Web.

I got 112 and 7090....so I think I'm qualified to be the Zombie Internet Vice President. ;)
posted by dejah420 at 7:05 AM on October 1, 2008

Huh, adequacy.org was a lot more short lived than I thought.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 8:07 AM on October 1, 2008

foresight nor hindsight is 20/20
posted by February28 at 8:25 AM on October 1, 2008

Happy sad cry.
posted by jon_kill at 8:34 AM on October 1, 2008

OUTRAGEOUS!
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 9:14 AM on October 1, 2008

eek googled myself and I didn't appear.
posted by Kimondo at 9:37 AM on October 1, 2008

Your search - "joe strummer dies" - did not match any documents.

etc
posted by cincinnatus c at 10:05 AM on October 1, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Like other smartasses, I too searched for the Republican Veep by her married name. Came up with nothing in 2001, so I searched "wasila, alaska" which yielded this gem (I'd link to the original post but it has disappeared into a ball of dark matter--and the apostrophes are all courtesy of the op):

PROTECTIVE BREEDS - http://www.dog-tracker.com Forums
I know a fella that live's in wasila alaska that own's about 30 pitbulls and
they live outside in chains from when they were seven months old. ...
http://www.dog-tracker.com/forums/board/messages/10275.shtml - View old version on the Internet Archive

and so I naturally wondered if these pitbulls, huddling together outside for warmth, at least had lipstick.
posted by beelzbubba at 10:15 AM on October 1, 2008

Wow, not only does my username appear, some of those are actually me.

Time for a new nick.
posted by rokusan at 11:23 AM on October 1, 2008

There is only one hit for "John Titor," and the link is dead.
posted by malocchio at 11:32 AM on October 1, 2008

"Sarah Palin" (in quotes) appears to have been excised. Unquoted, there are plenty of hits. Intriguing!
posted by topynate at 12:47 PM on October 1, 2008

Palin said she has declined requests by Tax Cap Yes to speak in favor of the initiative. Yet, she said, she doesn't object to her name's continuing to be listed on the group's Web site among 10 current or former government officials -- half from Mat-Su -- in support of the initiative.

Palin acknowledged that she was sounding quite the politician. ''I am so sorry I'm such a weasel,'' she said.

This is the best thing ever.
posted by topynate at 12:51 PM on October 1, 2008

dreamless.org
posted by ruelle at 12:54 PM on October 1, 2008

Heh.

In 2001, 75% of the links on the first few pages of a search for my name referred to me.

Now, I don't show up at all until page 4, and only in 3-4 of the links in the first 10 pages are about me.
posted by straight at 2:18 PM on October 1, 2008

Wow, I haven't looked at my old web page in a long, long time.

It's better left buried, I think.
posted by quin at 2:44 PM on October 1, 2008

Never gonna give you up
posted by oncogenesis at 5:30 PM on October 1, 2008

I just now saw this. Wow, I had totally forgotten the "guest page" from my first website that is the third result for my (unique) name. And I must be doing something right anyway - vanity Google in 2001 = 15, in 2008 = 16,200.
posted by gemmy at 5:35 PM on October 1, 2008

''I am so sorry I'm such a weasel,'' she said.

This shall now be the official promo image for tonight's VP debate. Unless someone can do a quick photoshop job of a weasel wearing lipstick...
posted by ericbop at 6:51 AM on October 2, 2008

Also, iPod?
posted by ericbop at 6:52 AM on October 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

From the Gmail search...

"Gmail is a linux (unix) email client for the Gnome desktop."

Hmmm. They spelt "Chrome" wrong.
posted by salishsea at 9:32 AM on October 3, 2008