I remember when I first got Internet access in 1994. I had a 14.4 modem and accessing any information was painfully slow. In those early days I tried Compuserve, Prodigy and America Online for my providers. I ultimately stuck with AOL for those first 2 years online. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I did not have free unfettered access to the World Wide Web but only what AOL wanted us to access.

When I was finally able to access the web I was unsure of how to get to places I wanted to visit. I went through a number of search engines as there seemed to be a new one every day back in the late 90s: Alta Vista, Yahoo, etc.

I now rely on Internet search for a large part of my work. As a reference librarian I have to be able to access the information people want when they want it. I had read a good deal about how Google does searches but I was intrigued, and a little overwhelmed, by how they establish page ranks. I was especially interested to learn the origin of link bombing.