Google and Food

Before the World Wide Web acquired user-friendly graphical user interfaces, it was text-only, and people who were interested in using the Internet to find information about food visited bulletin boards or government databases. Finding them was not easy, because search engines had not yet been invented.

The first attempt at cataloging the rapidly expanding resources on the Internet came in 1990—ARCHIE (that’s “archive” without the “v”), created by students at McGill University, was the first tool available for searching the web. It was quickly followed by GOPHER (aptly named for the digging mascot of the University of Minnesota), VERONICA (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives), and JUGHEAD (Jonzy’s Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation and Display). They made searching easier but were still text-only.