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Today's internet is dominated by a handful of search engines, but in the early days of the internet, you had dozens of options to choose from. There were several major search engines that remained popular even after the launch of Google in 1998, but the search giant's rise to power ultimately led to unfortunate casualties.

Alternatives to Google like AltaVista just couldn't keep up with the rapid changes of the early 2000s, eventually shutting down one by one. It wasn't due to a lack of innovation either, as older search engines like Infoseek were the first to introduce features like targeted advertising.

Some search engines even played by different rules, favoring conversational question-based search models instead of the keyword-oriented searches you see on sites like Google today.…