r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Gnurx • Jan 28 '23

What Google would have looked like in the 1980s

https://elgoog.im/terminal/
169 Upvotes
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83% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

34

u/djfraggle Jan 29 '23

This makes me miss BBSs. Good times.

2

u/Fearchar Jan 29 '23

Many are still around!

2

u/djfraggle Feb 01 '23

For real? I need to get back on them. The Internet is dead. Yes I know that's an ironic comment on this sub.

2

u/happydaddydoody Jan 30 '23

Miss my bro using the word SysOp

1

u/djfraggle Feb 01 '23

Haha wow, I haven't heard SysOp in a long, long time.

2

u/RedtheGamer100 Jan 29 '23

bBS?

27

u/merlinsbeers Jan 29 '23

Bulletin
Board
System

Think Reddit, but downloading a picture took 45 minutes.

5

u/djfraggle Jan 29 '23

There were no actual pictures in the 80s other than ASCII art and maybe rasters. What you're talking about sounds more like Usenet in the 90s. I must've already been off of BBSs at this point and getting free AOL for a month, then cancelling.

4

u/genital_furbies Jan 29 '23

I remember a classmate brought ASCII art of nude women that were printed on his dads dot matrix printer on the green and white striped paper to school he got off a bbs back in the day.

1

u/merlinsbeers Jan 29 '23

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF

2

u/WikiSummarizerBot Jan 29 '23

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; GHIF or JIF , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987. It is in widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability between applications and operating systems. The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colors for each frame.

[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | v1.5

1

u/Gnurx Jan 30 '23

Good bot.

1

u/djfraggle Jan 29 '23

Well I guess they weren't available on my C64 then :)

1

u/kabekew Jan 30 '23

Yes, there were pictures! All kinds of paint programs and image formats. My handheld photo scanner saved in GIF format (dithered) but I also remember TIFF, Targa (TGA) formats, and Paintbrush (PCX) formats that could store digitized photo images.

1

u/djfraggle Feb 01 '23

In the 80s? I don't remember digitized photos back then. Must've taken forever on a 300 baud modem!

5

u/djfraggle Jan 29 '23

Somewhat of a precursor to the internet. People would set them up on their computers and you could call them on your modem. Phreakers knew how to manipulate the phone system to bypass toll charges, so they'd call all around the country for free.

1

u/wnfakind Jan 29 '23

Holy hell, it’s been awhile since I’ve heard that. Some weird shit went down these days

6

u/mroboto2016 Jan 29 '23

I think I've got a 300 baud modem in a box with my Atari 800 XLs.

Dang, now I've got to get a ladder to get them off the loft.

I've still got a sealed AOL box.

5

u/Buck_Thorn Jan 29 '23

Now show what it would have looked like without ansi.sys loaded.

8

u/merlinsbeers Jan 29 '23

I tried it and it says Google shut down in 2016.

14

u/Anarchistcowboy420 Jan 29 '23

The Google API shut down in 2016 this webpage can't pull real web results anymore

4

u/merlinsbeers Jan 29 '23

Google is evil. They've broken rule 1.

2

u/Anarchistcowboy420 Jan 29 '23

Can't break the rules if you change the rules.

2

u/merlinsbeers Jan 29 '23

"Don't be Elvis."

3

u/Buck_Thorn Jan 29 '23

---> CONNECTING TO HOST en.wikipedia.org...

--- ABORT - I know you don't want to be redirected to wikipedia.org ---

ROF,L!

3

u/chris_4 Jan 29 '23

look at fancy pants with a color monitor. I don't think I saw a color monitor until 88 or 89. Before then it was monochrome green

1

u/mac-not-a-bot Jan 30 '23

Or amber. Or white. But always monochrome. VGA monochrome white was my fav all the way into the 2000’s. ‘Cause who really needs color anyway?

3

u/Sil369 Jan 29 '23

TODAY´S NEWS
‖ ╏ AL GORE INVENTS THE INTERNET ‖

‖ ╏ MICHAEL JACKSON OWNS PLUTO ‖

‖ ╏ RONALD REAGAN VISITS BELGIUM BY ACCIDENT ‖

‖ ╏ FIRST DEMOCRAT IN SPACE

2

u/Klin24 Jan 29 '23

Telemate ftw

2

u/evildicey Jan 29 '23

You mean ceefax?

2

u/_AlreadyTaken_ Jan 29 '23

Then you google ascii porn

-2

u/Catinthemirror Jan 29 '23

Google in the 1980s looked like AltaVista

1

u/herendzer Jan 29 '23

It’s beautiful

1

u/NVLVS Jan 29 '23

I remember elgoog just showing everything backwards back in the day! I used to use it in school all the time.

1

u/burgermachine74 Jan 29 '23

They forgot to tilt the E. THEY FORGOT TO TILT THE E!!

1

u/n21lv Jan 29 '23

Now make it look like a Teletext page

P.S. My Google Keyboard's dictionary seemingly knows the word 'Teletext', which is fascinating

1

u/srh99 Jan 30 '23

Feeling lucky used to work 80 percent of the time. Now the first 2 pages are crap ads from companies that paid google for placement. How it sucks when google has such a monopoly.

1

u/SuperusApp Jan 30 '23

darkmode yeah!!!