The first search came into existence in the early of 1990, which was called Archie. It is derived from word archive but with a missing 'v'. This first search tool allowed directory listing of files located on FTP sites. It created a searchable database of filenames. Archie was pursued by Gopher, a specialized text file search tool. It incorporated different search programs like Veronica and Jughead. These all were just search tools not proper search engines. The first web came in existing search engine in 1993, which was called Wandex. In 1993 another search engines also came into existence which is called Aliweb, this is still there today. Then WebCrawler came, the first full text crawler based search engine, which started searching through words in WebPages. After this started the era of mushrooming of search engines, which included Excite, Inktomi, Infoseek, Northern Light, and AltaVista. Many of these search engines compete with then popular directory like Yahoo!
Yahoo was first started service as a directory for students to categorize there favorite websites. In 1994 yahoo came to existence and after that it became a major search engine. As per the survival of the fittest law, in 2002 Yahoo! acquired Inktomi followed by All the Web and AltaVista in 2003. Though Yahoo had its own search engine but initially it used Google to provide results. In 2004, Yahoo became a full fledge search engine with its own database and transformed from a directory to a search engine.
Google is known as the boss of search engines which have not taken long time to become famous. Google search engines came into existence in 2001, which changed the whole process and concept of search engines. Every came with new algorithm to catch market response, so Google brought the concept of link popularity and page rank. Google provided a simple concept of word search through its crawlers or spiders. Now it enjoys the unbeatable database of search terms. Today, half the world relies on Google for their search. From cradle to grave, Google search can now provide you every single detail.
The most recent addition to search engines is MSN search powered by Microsoft. Microsoft started MSN beta search in 2004 power driven by its own crawlers called msnbot. Recently Microsoft started a new search platform - Windows Live Search, which is fully specialized for word searches.