net through Web browsers. In 1990, the first search
engine, Archie, was developed at McGill University,
retrieving information from the then 300,000 Inter-
net hosts. It was soon followed by rivals Veronica,
Jughead, and Gopher. With the release of the Web to
the public in 1991, a new generation of efficient
search engines was developed that used “indexes”
(the engine’s catalog of Web pages), “spiders” (pro-
grams that searched the Web to add pages to the in-
dex), and “relevancy software” that ranked retrieved
pages for their match to the query. To use a search
engine, the user formulates a search query, usually
based on a combination of terms (Boolean) or natu-
ral language. The search engine instantly combs
through billions of Web pages to retrieve those that
match the search criteria. The success of a search en-
gine depends largely on the number of Web pages in
its index and its algorithms for generating the most
relevant search results.
The launching of the search engine Excite in
1993 represented a breakthrough with Excite’s in-
novative statistical analysis of word relationships.
The year 1994 saw the birth of Yahoo!, which in-
cluded a directory classifying Web sites by subject
category. Lycos (1994) pioneered the ranking of
documents by relevance. Infoseek (1994) and
AltaVista (1995) were metasearch engines, combin-
ing the results of individual search engines; AltaVista
also offered a translation service and a search capa-
bility for sound and image files. Inktomi (1996) im-
pressed with large-scale search capability made pos-
sible by using distributed network technology. Ask
Jeeves (1997), now Ask, allowed for search queries in
everyday language. Google, formed by two Stanford
graduates in 1998, quickly became popular with its
extensive search capabilities and such features as
“cached,” which highlighted search terms in the
document and displayed information from Web
pages that had expired. By decade-end, search en-
gines were processing tens of millions of searches
daily, utilizing billions of indexed pages. With the
dot-com bubble, search engine companies skyrock-
eted in stock price and status.
Impact The emergence of increasingly powerful
search engines in the 1990’s made vast resources of hu-
man intelligence available to any inquiry. Whatever
fame and profit search engine companies achieved
were a small reflection of the precise access to Web in-
formation that search engines made possible.
Further Reading
Battelle, John.The Search: How Google and Its Rivals
Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our
Culture.New York: Portfolio, 2005.
Hock, Randolph.The Extreme Searcher’s Internet Hand-
book: A Guide for the Serious Searcher.Medford, N.J.:
CyberAge Books, 2004.
Howard BrombergSee also Advertising; America Online; Com-
puters; Dot-coms; E-mail; Internet; Microsoft; Spam;
Stock market; World Wide Web; Yahoo!. Seinfeld
Identification Television comedy series
Creators Jerry Seinfeld (1954- ) and Larry
David (1947- )
Date Aired from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998This sitcom proved that sophisticated, irreverent humor
could be popular with a mass television audience.Famous as the program about nothing,Seinfeldwas
the creation of little-known comedian Jerry Seinfeld
and Larry David, a comedian turned comedy writer.
Because their program was more subtle than the typ-
ical situation comedy, National Broadcasting Com-
pany (NBC) executives were puzzled by it. A pilot ep-
isode shown in the summer of 1989 was encouraging
enough to warrant four more episodes the following
spring. The series finally joined NBC’s regular
schedule in January, 1991, and slowly became the
most popular program on broadcast network televi-
sion.
Seinfeld played a fictional version of himself, a
comedian living in a small Manhattan apartment.
In the early seasons, each episode featured bits of
Seinfeld’s stand-up routines.Seinfeldrevolved around
Jerry’s dealings with his boyhood best friend, the
neurotic George Costanza (Jason Alexander), his
former girlfriend, the vivacious Elaine Benes (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus), and his eccentric neighbor, Cosmo
Kramer (Michael Richards).Narcissism and Responsibility Seinfeld reflected
the concerns of many Americans, especially baby
boomers, in the 1990’s by presenting youthful char-
acters approaching middle age but reluctant to give
up their youth. Jerry and George, in particular,760 Seinfeld The Nineties in America