by Alan Townend33. Word story: Search engines
The Internet is truly a wonderland that can take you into any world,
any field of knowledge you desire. The trouble is where to start and
how to get where you want to. That's where we need the guidance
and help of «search engines». They come in all shapes and sizes
and have the most unusual names like: Abasearch, Altavista, Ask
Jeeves, Clickey, Excite, SoDado and possibly the most famous of all,
Google. All these «search engines» will take you to your chosen
site in seconds and then give you thousands, if not millions of
possibilities. Search engines is yet another expression that has been
created in the age of the Internet and computing and as so often it is
made up of words that are in common use with their original
meanings. «Search» simply means «examine in detail» usually
with the purpose of trying to find someone or something. If you
mislay your car keys You search the house from top to bottom
because you know that they are somewhere in the house. Again if
the police suspect that someone is carrying something like an illegal
drug, they may well «search» that person, which means they will
check pockets and all items of clothing. And then there is the other
half of the expression: «engine». This means a machine that with the
help of some kind of power will be enable something to move, like
the «car engine, the steam engine». When the word first came to
be used it had the idea of natural ability or genius. So when you put
the two words together as «search engines» there is a certain
appropriateness when you consider how clever these devices are.
The question is: How do they work? To be honest I really don't know
or to use an expression meaning that you haven't the slightest idea
how to answer a question: «Search me!»