>>2163371Search engines existed pretty much from the time www entered the public consciousness, altavista, lycos, dogpile, etc. Before search engines were established as the way to go, there was the site where other sites were just listed as lists in categories. Like you would click on Food, then Mexican, then some other category, and so on to see a list of sites/links on that topic.
www really entered the public consciousness around 96. Before then for a few years, you had prodigy, compuserve, and aol, which gave people access to various forms of information, as well as letting people chat in rooms (which was a new concept and people would spend hours and hours just chatting with strangers in chat rooms, sometimes about topics, sometimes about random things. And be amazed they could talk with strangers in Seattle, Dallas, and Boston all at the same time. But I don't think people really do this anymore afaik)
There were also the newsgroups, where you could find people/information about various topics, by looking at the newsgroup name, e.g. alt.sex.boobs, which was in the alternative category, then the sex category, then about boobs, or whatever.
In the early to mid-90s there were almost no poor fags on the intra or internets, because you had to at least be able to afford an expensive computer and access. Many also were tech oriented people. That's when the internet was very libertarian and wasn't a complete trash dump, that came later as the general public got access starting in the early 2000s.
Anyway in the early 90s, or especially any time before that, if you wanted to know anything you would consult your home set of encyclopedias (if you weren't a poor fag), but if poor or just wanted more information, you would go down to the library and look through the card catalogue to find books on the topic you want to know about, then wander the aisles to get the book. If you were at a smaller branch library, sometimes they would have to get the book shipped...
