The 2008 Candidates Back in 2001
- Posted on [October 5, 2008 ] @ 10:59 am
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In honor of its 10th anniversary, Google is letting users search an old version of its index from 2001. Searching this index shows some interesting artifacts — sort of a lens into the past.
Silicon Alley Insider noted that searching the 2001 index for “iPhone” shows several results that refer to a product with the same name, but it was a desktop internet device made by Cisco that allows you to make phone calls, send/receive email, and access the Internet. 
This got me wondering what other items would be interesting to review from 2001. I searched for Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin, and I scanned the first 3 search result pages. The search results seem to reflect who these candidates were back in 2001 — and I’ve summarized the results below.
- a couple of senate pages“”:
- a couple pages about him atHarvard
- a link to www.obama2000.org (which is empty now)
- a few articles about his campaign for senator
- a few pages about teaching at University of Chicago Law School (including his bio and resume at the time)
- and more of the above
- His old senate page(compared to his new one)
- a forum on freerepublic.com with a critical discussion of him
- an article calling him a warmonger and another calling him a “loose cannon”
- a page with Joe Biden’s position on several key topics (like abortion, foreign policy, etc. interestingly it didn’t even mention same sex marriage)
- a few articles about Biden’s friendships with Senator Specter, Jesse Helms and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen Dover
- a link to McCain2000.com
- his senate page (in photos with Dick Cheney and Rudy Giuliani)
- McCain’s position on key issues at the time
- a list of his skeleton’s in the closet
- a few pages about his campaign in 2000
- and more biographies and articles about his campaigns
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- There was nothing said about “Sarah Palin” (in quotes) — 0 search results.
- When I search for her name without quotes around them (” “), the results included ancestry information, and a couple of pages mentioning Sarah Jessica Parker.
