Searching the Internet B.G. (Before Google) – Input Output:
The first major search advance was Archie, which beginning in 1990 made it possible to search through a site’s file directories. Archie was painful to use, but compared to what we had been dealing with, it was wonderful. Archie was quickly followed by the University of Nevada System Computing Services’ Veronica, which tried to provide Archie-style searches for plain text files.
(Via h30565.www3.hp.com)