The first search engine was born in 1990 - and its intended purpose was to help students at McGill University in Montreal browse files in an FTP archive.
Essentially, it was an algorithm that made a list of directory names easily searchable, but did not allow access to the content within those directories.
The search engine was named Archie (the word 'archive' without the 'v') and the man behind it was a computer scientist from Barbados called Alan Emtage.
After more work, Archie became more sophisticated and allowed for more complex searches.
In the mid-90s, work on Archie stopped completely, as bigger companies took over the market.
What's interesting is that, while search engines have really taken off in the past few decades, and companies like Google are worth somewhere in the region of $250 billion dollars - Mr. Emtage didn't make any significant money from being a search engine pioneer.
