Ten years ago, Google wasn't much. These days, of course, the company enjoys a near-monopoly, with increasingly spooky power over commerce and conversation on the Net.
Look at it this way: When was the last time you ran a search on Yahoo just because you thought its index would do a good job?
Google's decade-long rise to absolute power is nothing compared with YouTube's supersonic ascension of just a couple of years. So, you never know, we may yet see a killer app that guts Google. Or at least a viable option or two.
Until then, people who seek a broad audience on the Web will continue to read the tea leaves in Google's official communications and follow the teachings of professional nice guy Matt Cutts. (He runs Google's spam patrol.)
For me, as for most bloggers and web site pros, it's that old love-hate dynamic. The Google juice tastes a lot like Kool-Aid, and we're all drinking it.
So it's fun to be reminded of a time when Google was an option, not an imperative.
The world's default home page has been offering a look into Google's past with an option to explore its search index from 2001. From the Google blog:
We dusted (the index) off and took it for a spin, gobsmacked to see how different the web was in early 2001. "iPod" did not refer to a music player, "youtube" was nonsense, and if you were looking for "Michael Phelps," chances are you meant the scientist, not the swimmer.
I think of myself as having had a reasonably high profile in that Kubrickian year, but the evidence proves otherwise. A couple of crappy credits associated with the Hollywood Reporter and something I said in a speech. That's it.
These days, I'm all over the place on Google, for better or worse. More importantly, so are my Internet properties.
Maybe I'll have another glass of that fruity stuff after all.
