History of Search Engines and Directories - Search Engine History

Below is an outline showing a summary of the history of search engines and directories. This outline is updated as historical events occur within the search engine industry and as new information becomes available about past search engine history.

We no longer maintain this area as it has come down to Google, Yahoo!, Bing (previously MSN/Live), and Ask. Google is by far the most active of the four as evidenced by our Top Search Engines coverage.

This historical outline is an excellent resource for a pre Google search engine history timeline. See additional resources and references for the history of search engines.

Search Engine History last modified: 2009-01-12

Search Engines Historical Timeline

2009

2009-07-29 - Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape
SUNNYVALE, Calif. and REDMOND, Wash. - 29 July, 2009 - Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

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2007

2007 June - Google Acquisitions

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2006

2006 January - Google launches Google Video
2006 February - SE traffic 5.1 billion searches per month
2006 February - Teoma/Ask.com The Butler is gone
2006 March - Zeal Directory discontinued
2006 March - Google acquires Writely.com
2006 March - Google launches Google Mars
2006 March - Google joins the S&P 500 Index
2006 April - Yahoo! launches FairChase Travel
2006 August - Google launches Writely Beta
2006 August - Danny Sullivan resigning from SEW
2006 September - MSN launches Live Search

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2005

2005 January - AOL Search Relaunches
2005 January - Gigablast Index Size 1,000,000,000+
2005 March - Overture Renamed Yahoo! SMS
2005 March - Yahoo! Celebrates 10th Anniversary
2005 March - IAC/InterActiveCorp acquires AskJeeves
2005 May - AskJeeves acquires Excite Europe
2005 June - Corey Rudl dies at age 34
2005 August - Incisive acquires SearchEngineWatch
2005 August - MSN acquires Teleo (VoIP)
2005 September - Google offers free WiFi to San Francisco
2005 October - Google launches Google Local
2005 December - AOL acquires Truveo

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2004

2004 January - New MSN Search BETA
2004 February - Lycos Communities discontinued
2004 February - Lycos Search discontinued
2004 February - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Yahoo!
2004 March - Yahoo! Site Match™ powered by Overture
2004 March - AskJeeves acquires Excite, iWon, My Way
2004 March - AlltheWeb switches to Yahoo! Search
2004 March - Yahoo! Toolbar with WebRank
2004 March - Google Gmail free email service
2004 March - AltaVista switches to Yahoo! Search
2004 June - Google invests in Baidu Search China
2004 June - AskJeeves acquires Tukaroo Search
2004 June - Yahoo! launches Yisou.com China
2004 June - AOL acquires Advertising.com
2004 June - New MSN Search Technology Preview
2004 August 19 - Google IPO GOOG NASDAQ
2004 August - Yahoo! launches Local Search Engine
2004 September - Amazon launches A9.com Search
2004 November - Google Index Size 8,058,044,651
2004 November - New MSN Search

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2003

2003 March - Yahoo! acquires Inktomi
2003 April - Overture acquires Fast/AlltheWeb
2003 April - Overture acquires AltaVista
2003 April - Google acquires Applied Semantics
2003 April - FindWhat acquires Espotting
2003 June - Google AdSense
2003 July - Yahoo! to buy Overture
2003 October - Yahoo! acquires Overture
2003 October - Google acquires Sprinks

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2002

2002 February - Google AdWords Select
2002 March - Gigablast Pre-Beta
2002 March - LookSmart acquires WiseNut
2002 July - Gigablast Beta
2002 December - Froogle

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2001

2001 October - GoTo changes name to Overture
2001 September - AskJeeves acquires Teoma
2001 Sepetember - WiseNut
2001 August - LookSmart integrates Zeal
2001 May - JoeAnt
2001 April - Teoma
2001 February - GoGuides
2001 February - Google acquires Deja Archive

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2000

2000 May - Terra acquires Lycos
2000 June - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Google
2000 June - Vivisimo
2000 September - Business.com
2000 September - Espotting
2000 September - LookSmart acquires Zeal Media
2000 October - Google AdWords
2000 December - Google Toolbar

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1999

1999 January - At Home acquires Excite
1999 February - GO Network
1999 June - CMGI acquires AltaVista
1999 July - Disney acquires Infoseek
1999 August - AlltheWeb
1999 September - FindWhat
1999 November - NBCi/Snap
About.com

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1998

1998 April - Direct Hit
1998 May - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Inktomi
1998 June - ODP/DMOZ
1998 September - MSN Search
1998 September - Google
1998 October - Lycos acquires HotBot
GoTo acquires WWW Worm

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1997

1997 February - The Mining Company
1997 April - AskJeeves
1997 July - FAST Search
1997 August - Northern Light
GoTo

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1996

1996 January - BackRub
1996 April - Alexa
1996 May - HotBot
1996 June - Archive.org
1996 October - LookSmart
Dogpile
Mamma

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1995

1995 February - Infoseek
1995 May - SavvySearch
1995 June - MetaCrawler
1995 August - DejaNews
1995 August - Magellan
1995 September - Inktomi
1995 October - Excite
1995 December - AltaVista

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1994

1994 April - WebCrawler
1994 April - Yahoo!
1994 July - Lycos
1994 December - First W3C meeting at MIT

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1993

1993 February - Architext
1993 March - First email message sent by Bill Clinton
1993 March - Jughead
1993 June - WWW Wanderer
1993 August - Mosaic Web Browser
1993 November - Aliweb
1993 December - WWW Worm
1993 December - JumpStation
1993 December - RBSE

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1992

1992 July - Lynx Web Browser
1992 December - Veronica

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1991

1991 April - Gopher
1991 April - WAIS publisher fed search engine
1991 May - WWW Server Production

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1990

1990 December - WWW Server Prototype
Archie

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Admin Note: The authors of the above search engine history summary do not claim that the dates indicated are 100% accurate. We've researched multiple documents from various resources and have ascertained that the dates above are an approximation based on the search engine history information we've obtained. Some dates represent inception of the search engine or directory. Other dates are actual launch dates where the search engine or directory was made available to the public.

Additional Resources and References for Search Engine History

Search Engine History
http://www.SearchEngineHistory.com/
A comprehensive overview of the history of search engine technology companies. Read about search's origin in 1945 and innovation through 2007. Search Engine History is published by Aaron Wall.
Wikipedia - Web Search Engine
http://EN.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine#History
As of late 2007, Google was by far the most popular Web search engine worldwide. A number of country-specific search engine companies have become prominent; for example Baidu is the most popular search engine in the People's Republic of China and guruji.com in India.

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