Do You Remember Life Before Google?

[wenrob]

My son just flew through Chicago and he sent me a text saying only every 2 out of 3 pay phones were removed.

They are pretty non existent here. Some in the older parts of town but 90% of them don’t work. They were independently maintained like a snack machine or atm type of deal. Not worth it for people to try and maintain them anymore.

 

[willowsnn3]

Remember "Ask Jeeves" ??
Yes, I am older than dirt.

 

[kimblebee]

‘Michael J. Fox’ disappearing was the best LMAO

 

[kimblebee]

Remember "Ask Jeeves" ??
Yes, I am older than dirt.

I remember dogpile. I think it’s a little older.

 

[chartle]

They are pretty non existent here. Some in the older parts of town but 90% of them don’t work. They were independently maintained like a snack machine or atm type of deal. Not worth it for people to try and maintain them anymore.

A former daily blogger of some note here, Adam the Woo, moved to an apartment in Hollywood and started to do a lot of lets walk around a talk about things videos and as he would approach an outdoor pay phone he would "take bets" on whether or not it worked and even if it had a handset. Half didn't have the hand set and most that did didn't have a ring tone.

 

[chartle]

Remember "Ask Jeeves" ??
Yes, I am older than dirt.

I remember Yahoo when you looked for the sunglasses icon to find the "cool" sites like one from Slash from Guns and Roses live snake cam. He had a camera on his snake YOU COULD WATCH LIVE!

 

[NYCgrrl]

Reference books!

Roget's Thesaurus
Encyclopaedia Britannica and various other encylopaedias like the Books of Knowledge(?)
Oxford's Unabridged Dictionary of the English Languages ( my mother used it as a form of learning punishment; you had to memorise all the words and definitions on any page she picked at random and if you knew how to type it was onionskin paper for you with nooo mistakes allowed. Errr I still don't know how to QWERTY properly but can still get lost in the minutae of a dictionary, LOL.

Bought my kiddos a set of EB and certainly one of them used to boast about his inability to learn anything via osmosis. I told him he was "spayshul" and now he makes sure I take his DD to the library.

 

[Grumpy's Gal]

When our DD started to junior high, we took her over a few days before. I wanted to make sure she knew how to use a pay phone if she needed a ride and missed the bus. Of course we couldn't find the pay phone. We asked and they said they don't have a pay phone anymore. That was 2007 or so.

 

[bcla]

Remember "Ask Jeeves" ??
Yes, I am older than dirt.

There were a lot of search engines before Google. I remember checking out most of them in the late-90s including AltaVista, Lycos, Hotbot/Inktomi, AskJeeves, etc. I remember when one of Google's first customers was Yahoo. Heck - I was using Yahoo when it wasn't a full portal or a search engine. It was basically a directory of websites on a college server. I tried out the old website and it looks like Stanford removed the server.

I theoretically had internet access in college in the late 80s and early 90s, but back then it wasn't routinely available to every student. I had class-specific accounts (needed for class projects) that I could use for email, but for the most part we used them for departmental email such as sending messages to professors and teaching assistants. I think we all had access to use it for external email but I never really tried it initially. It might not have worked all that well anyways since our accounts were temporary. In grad school I got my first email account that I could use indefinitely. I even checked it a few times after I'd graduated as it hadn't been disabled. That's around the time I discovered Mosaic when I was just going over a list of programs we had available on our Unix network.

As for that stuff about travel brochures - I used to go to a relative's travel agency office. There were all sorts of travel brochures and. I also had a fascination with maps - especially airport layouts since most road maps showed runways and terminals.

Things change over time. I'm going to have a difficult time trying to explain things to my kid. How to explain "data tapes" in Star Wars to a kid who hasn't really experienced any kind of tape media? I've got a ton of archived VHS and Compact Cassette tapes, but I don't think my kid understands what they are.

 

[Gary M]

I'm really old and remember life before TV. I also remember when gas stations had paper road maps on display that were free.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

Our first Walt Disney World trip was in 1992, nobody I knew had a computer. We sent to Disney for brochures and picked our hotel by looking at them. There was no online resource for reviews for us. I got my first computer sometime in 1998. It was a refurbished one running Windows 98 and was a slow as molasses. I got AOL by default because I picked up the free trial disc in the supermarket. Remember them? They were everywhere.

 

[chartle]

There were a lot of search engines before Google. I remember checking out most of them in the late-90s including AltaVista, Lycos, Hotbot/Inktomi, AskJeeves, etc. I remember when one of Google's first customers was Yahoo. Heck - I was using Yahoo when it wasn't a full portal or a search engine. It was basically a directory of websites on a college server. I tried out the old website and it looks like Stanford removed the server.

Remember iWon.com?

 

[PollyannaMom]

"Do You Remember Life Before Google?"

I definitely remember it...but I rarely miss it.

I do have lovely memories of trips to the library, and I actually think that things routinely taking some time made for a more patient society in general. But the convenience of information now allows so much to be possible that I would have a very hard time actually going back.

 

[bcla]

Remember iWon.com?

Vaguely. I do recall there were a lot of obscure search engines. I thought many of them were just "overlays" on top of better known ones, but with some sort of gimmick such as donating part of the advertising proceeds to charity.

 

[gotomu212]

We were telling our son about movie-fone (that’s how they spelled it). You’d call and listen to the movie times and usually sit through 10 movies and RIGHT when they got to the one you wanted your mom/dad would walk in and start talking to you and YOUD MISS IT. Ahhh the agony.

 

[amberpi]

Altavista and metacrawler were in the mix for me before google too.

 

[bcla]

We were telling our son about movie-fone (that’s how they spelled it). You’d call and listen to the movie times and usually sit through 10 movies and RIGHT when they got to the one you wanted your mom/dad would walk in and start talking to you and YOUD MISS IT. Ahhh the agony.

Even before Moviefone a lot of movie theaters would have that kind of info recorded by an employee. However, they didn't have Russ Leatherman.

 

[chartle]

Vaguely. I do recall there were a lot of obscure search engines. I thought many of them were just "overlays" on top of better known ones, but with some sort of gimmick such as donating part of the advertising proceeds to charity.

At least at first depending on how long you were on the page and what you clicked you got sort of raffle tickets.

Every day week month want ever they held these raffles and I think claimed millions of dollars in prizes.

I recall that this businesses plan was so innovative that the first interviewees for jobs there were not told what this plan was and its was called the "Secret Sauce". They only learned what it was and even what the company was until after they were hired. I guess a standard non disclosure agreement wasn't enough.

 

[superme80]

I remember those days! I didn't use the internet for any research until college. My husband and I went out for our anniversary last night. Sitting in our car we were able to check wait times for take out, find the nearest Wal-Mart and check to see when we would be back all within 5 minutes. We could never have done that 20 years ago.

 

[indimom]

I certainly remember, and we were pretty late to the game. lol. (I researched our first Disney trip via library books in 2005.)
I would never, ever want to go back to those days. You can find ANYTHING, any time, any where. It's amazing!!!

My kids were thoroughly awed when they learned that dad and I traveled the country with a paper map, paper money, no phone and no seatbelts. It was like something out of Indiana Jones to them...