Archie, created in 1990 by a student (Alan Emtage) at the McGill University, Montreal, Canada was the first internet search engine. Archie was written to search FTP (File transfer Protocol) directories and such that users can search the page to find a particular file on a shared disk. It was a revolutionary invention upon which we base our online retrieval of information today and the start of the search engine age.
Archie operated by developing a database of directory entries of different FTP sites. In contrast to the search engines of these days, it did not index file contents but only file names. Archie allowed users to search files based on their search term and saved a lot of time and effort in search. This was a giant leap in the structuring of the increasing information on the internet.
The internet began to be used by people in a more friendly manner with the introduction of Archie since it was not a place that one could navigate easily but rather it was a place where the internet was approachable as well as user friendly. It enabled researchers, students and developers to find needed files in a quicker manner without browsing the server manually. This enhancement helped in the fast growth of internet use in the early 1990s.
Some other search engine tools followed after Archie, like Veronica and Jughead, and these were used to search Gopher servers. These tools have increased the level of search by indexing increased content as well as enhancing the searching process. But Archie is the one that has so to speak pioneered the way of sophisticated solutions such as Yahoo!, AltaVista and later Google.
The invention of Archie has become a point in the history of the internet. It made the difference between the crude storage of information and the organized search accessibility, and it actually defined the design of future search engines. The simplicity and effectiveness was the key to making it an important innovation in the process of making the internet more accessible to a larger population across the globe.
Conclusion
Archie was the first one that initiated the development of internet search technology. Although it was primitive to the current engines, it was the stepping stone to structuring and accessing information on the internet. The invention of advanced search engines such as Google would have followed another course without the input of Archie. Its invention played an important role in turning the internet into the source of information that we use today.
