The Internet allowed anyone on the Internet to see public files on any other computer on the Internet. If, of course, one knew they were there and their address. So, early on, they came up with a search engine called Archie. But early Internet computers were mid-range with hundreds of users and with an Admin who decided what programs to install, so I never saw Archie. There were maybe 100 computers on the Internet back then, so one hoped for e-mails giving the address of a research paper one might find useful. Then there was the Usenet where people could post links to their research papers and I used Usenet heavily. There were sections devoted to very esoteric research, and sections devoted to humour and just about everything else. It was useful when I first found it, but then it got overwhelmed with, among other things, the very first spam, a couple of lawyers looking for clients who flooded the Usenet with their adverts.
Then came the World Wide Web, with browsers and servers and it seemed like everyone and his dog had a website, but finding the ones with information one needed seemed impossible. So someone developed Lycos. Lycos didn't want you to miss anything. So if you searched for 'date' it would find data and rate and dare and etc. and etc., just in case you misspelled your search term. My boss had a son who had to do a paper on 'date rape'. So I typed in 'date rape' and got lots of important dates, 4th of July websites, 25 December, 1 January, etc., etc. plus the dates grown in Saudi Arabia plus, plus, plus. Too many papers about date (or close to date) so it never got to date rape. So I tried rape date, and got papers about rape (but not date rape) and papers about rap and rep and reap and and and but nothing about date rape. So useless.
Then came Yahoo. Yahoo asked people to put their information on Yahoo and then did searches based on conjunction. If I asked for 'date and rape' I got only papers about date rape. GREAT! (but too late for my boss's son's high school paper). As long as Yahoo was a student project.
Then they graduated and venture capital took over. Everything on Yahoo was ranked by how much money the person paid. I was asked to find coin dealers in New Orleans. I got coin dealers in Chicago that paid to be listed, and restaurants in New Orleans that paid, but no coin dealers in New Orleans, since none had paid enough to be listed.
Then came Google. Pages ranked by how many other pages pointed at them. Scammers created lots of fake sites whose only purpose was to point to a site so it would get a higher rank. But Google tried to program the search engine not to use such faux sites in making its ranking. One could find just what one wanted, if it was anywhere on the Internet. But that was while they were still students, and Google was a student project. Actually, that's not quite fair, Google used that same model for several years. But after they became a commercial project, they blocked lots of sites. I found a site about the US war to colonise the Philippines. Then it went from detailed history to just one page: "this site is now blocked by Google, so we can't make any money and we're taking the site down". They said they asked, "Why?" and got no reply. So Google could kill a site they did not like. But still, if they didn't hate the site you were looking for, Google would probably find it for you.
But I looked for a good walker for an elderly man who has some disease his doctor said starts Al something or other, but I can't remember what the doctor said or why I went to see him. Anyway, a couple of years ago, I found lots of walkers, many of which looked much better than the one I'd just bought, but I really didn't need another walker.
My walker is getting old, and I'm looking for a new one. I looked. Not much turned up. Then a florist told me: Google has gone the same as Yahoo right after they went public: sites are ranked by how much they pay Google. Pay enough, your site gets ranked first, in bold, 'This is the page you need!' even if it has nothing to do with what you're looking for. Build a page, leave it floating, it won't turn up on Google even if it's a perfect match for what you're searching for. So I found very few walkers, and all overpriced and not nearly as good as the ones I could find before. Google is now almost worthless if you need to find the best page to answer your query.
If one is looking for the best walker, Google will always point to the walker that paid the best to Alphabet, and they gave their money to Alphabet, they did not waste it building the best walker because paying Alphabet is a better way to have great sales.
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