Before Google ever was there was Archie – the first Internet search engine – conceptualized and implemented by Alan Emtage while he was working as a systems administrator for McGill University’s School of Computer Science.
Alan, a friend and colleague from my years at Mediapolis, is a Barbados native. He told the story of Archie in The Nation Newspaper Sunday:
Professionally, Archie is Alan’s greatest accomplishment to date.
“That was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was largely being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. There were other people who had similar ideas and were working on similar projects, I just happened to get there first.
“It is considered the original search engine and a lot of the techniques that I and other people that worked with me on Archie came up with are basically the same techniques that Google, Yahoo! and all the other search engines use. So, it was my one opportunity to change the world and you don’t get many of those,” Alan told the SUNDAY SUN.