Once upon a time there were numerous search engines. They all lived more or less happily together in a beautiful area of cyberspace, appropriately called Dick and Harry’s Search Engine Repair Center of America and the Outer Colonies. Then one day trouble began. Nobody remembers when or how exactly. Some elders, living on the impenetrable mountain peaks and ledges, have a vague recollection, but much of that could be myth. Anyway, in a nutshell, after Looksmart bought Wisenut and AskJeeves bought Teoma, Lycos bought Hotbot and Overture bought AlltheWeb and Altavista, AOL bought Netscape which had owned DMOZ for ages, Yahoo bought Inktomi and Overture, AOL finally bought Google after LookSmart bought AskJeeves, leaving nothing to buy for MSN. Served them right. And then there were none. Or at least very few. Life as we knew it ceased to exist and was replaced with some lookalike, but much more confusing and expensive, software package. All because of this new WYFINWYSF (pronounce “wifinwizzif“) interface. What You Found Is Not What You Searched For. Sic transit…

disclaimer: fairy tales don’t necessarily have to get their chronological facts straight