25 July 2018
Life before Google: What was it like
By BBC
Is it OK to turn my cat vegan? What's that fresh smell that babies have? What is love?*
In the 20 years since it was founded, Google has provided answers to the most random queries, become a verb and, on Wednesday, received a record $5bn fineafter giving itself a bit too much of an edge over its rivals.
Some jobs with an emphasis on research have been altered in major ways by its invention, to the extent that it's hard to imagine how those jobs were once done.
"I had to write about such a range of things that nobody ever expected me to know everything," he said. "I'd have an encyclopaedia, the local library, but the important thing was to know who knew the facts, and to know who knew those people. I liked to think that there was someone I knew in every village.
"We also had a library in our central office in Liverpool and they kept every newspaper, every cutting of every story. If you wanted anything on a particular subject, the librarians would go and find it and fax it over. They were fantastic.
"I kept everything too - I remember a story about a tiny baby being born miles from anywhere in the middle of winter, the weight of a bag of sugar. She was wrapped up in cotton wool in the ambulance as it made its way slowly through the snow and ice across the moors, and she wasn't expected to survive.
"I did the story six months later when she left hospital, and then years later, I just happened to go through my cuttings and came across her story. I saw she would have been a few months from her 21st, so I rang around, contacted the local post office, and it turned out she was living a few minutes from my office.
"Having Google later was certainly useful. But nothing compares to that personal contact at all."
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