• Zexks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    No they wouldn’t. I’m guessing you’re not old enough to remember a time before search engines. The public web dies without crawling. Corporations will own it all you’ll never hear about anything other than amazon or Walmart dot com again.

    • Wilco@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Nope. That isn’t how it worked. You joined message boards that had lists of web links. There were still search engines, but they were pretty localized. Google was also amazing when their slogan was “don’t be evil” and they meant it.

      • zanyllama52@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        I was there. People carried physical notepads with URLs, shared them on BBS’, or other forums. It was wild.

        • i_love_FFT@jlai.lu
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          3 months ago

          There was also “circle banners” of websites that would link to each others… And then off course “stumble upon”…