Yahoo

Before Google took over, search was a wide-open experiment

Before Google's dominance, the internet search landscape was a diverse experiment with various methods like Yahoo's human-curated directories, webrings, and early search engines like AltaVista, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves. These systems prioritized different aspects such as breadth, speed, or conversational queries, and faced challenges with scaling and manipulation before Google's PageRank algorithm and user-friendly interface established a new standard for relevance and usability.