Time Travel: Google Shows You the Web in 2001

To honor its 10th birthday, Google put up a search engine that reflects the web in 2001, TechCrunch reports. Other than the Yahoo-esque exclamation point in Google’s logo, the search engine has not changed that much since—but searches show the web, and the world, have:

• "iPod" brings up a defunct document-processing system, while "YouTube" yields zero links.

• “Barack Obama” brings up a baby-faced version of the Illinois state senator, while "John McCain" brings up his now-retired "StraightTalkExpress.com" in which he rails against congressmen opposed to McCain-Feingold.
• Twitter was for the birds in 2001, generating 16,200 mentions; now, 92.9 million. Fellow Web 2.0 power Facebook? 1,180 then, 638 million now.
• Though basketball phenom LeBron James gets 3,510 hits in the '01 search, that pales in comparison to the 6.3 million for him now.

(More Google stories.)