Question: when did microsoft launch its own search engine

title: Timeline of web search engines
text: Year Month and date ( if available ) Event type Event Pre-web search engine The Archie search engine , created by Alan Emtage , Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch , computer science students at McGill University in Montreal , goes live . The program downloads the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP ( File Transfer Protocol ) sites , creates a searchable database of a lot of file names ; however , Archie does not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data is so limited it can be readily searched manually . 1991 Pre-web search engine The rise of Gopher ( created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota ) leads to two new search programs , Veronica and Jughead . Like Archie , they search the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems . Veronica ( Very Easy Rodent - Oriented Net - wide Index to Computerized Archives ) provides a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings . Jughead ( Jonzy 's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display ) is a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers . While the name of the search engine `` Archie '' was not a reference to the Archie comic book series , `` Veronica '' and `` Jughead '' are characters in the series , thus referencing their predecessor . Virtual library of the web Timothy Berners - Lee sets up the Virtual Library ( VLib ) , a loose confederation of topical experts maintaining relevant topical link lists . 1993 June First web robot Matthew Gray produces the first known web robot , the Perl - based World Wide Web Wanderer , and uses it to generate an index of the web called the Wandex . However , the World Wide Web Wanderer is intended only to measure the size of the web rather than to facilitate search . 1993 September 2 First web search engine W3Catalog , written by Oscar Nierstrasz at the University of Geneva , is released to the world . It is the world 's first web search engine . It does not rely on a crawler and indexer but rather on already existing high - quality lists of websites . One of its main drawbacks is that the bot accesses each page hundreds of times each day , causing performance degradation . 1993 October / November Second web search engine Aliweb , a web search engine created by Martijn Koster , is announced . It does not use a web robot , but instead depends on being notified by website administrators of the existence at each site of an index file in a particular format . The absence of a bot means that less bandwidth is used ; however , most website administrators are not aware of the need to submit their data . 1993 December First web search engine to use a crawler and indexer JumpStation , created by Jonathon Fletcher , is released . It is the first WWW resource - discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine ( crawling , indexing , and searching ) . 1994 January New web search engine Infoseek is launched . 1994 January Web search engine supporting natural language queries Altavista is launched . This is a first among web search engines in many ways : it has unlimited bandwidth , allows natural language queries , has search tips , and allows people to add or delete their domains in 24 hours . 1994 March New web search engine The World - Wide Web Worm is released . It is claimed to have been created in September 1993 , at which time there did not exist any crawler - based search engine , but it is not the earliest at the time of its actual release . It supports Perl - based regular expressions . 1994 April 20 New web search engine The WebCrawler search engine , created by Brian Pinkerton at the University of Washington , is released . Unlike its predecessors , it allows users to search for any word in any webpage , which has become the standard for all major search engines since . 1994 April New web directory Yahoo ! launches its web directory . Yahoo ! would not build its own web search engine until 2002 , relying until then on outsourcing the search function to other companies . 1994 July New web search engine Lycos , a web search engine , is released . It began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University 's main Pittsburgh campus . 1995 New web directory LookSmart is released . It competes with Yahoo ! as a web directory , and the competition makes both directories more inclusive . January -- March New web search engine Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin working on BackRub , the predecessor to Google Search . The crawler begins activity in March . May New web search engine Inktomi releases its HotBot search engine . 1997 April New natural language - based web search engine Ask Jeeves , a natural language web search engine , that aims to rank links by popularity , is released . It would later become Ask.com . 1998 July -- September New web search portal MSN launches a search portal called MSN Search , using search results from Inktomi . After many changes to the backend search engine , MSN would start developing in - house search technology in 2005 , and later change its name to Bing in June 2009 . 1997 September 15 New web search engine The domain Google.com is registered . Soon , Google Search is available to the public from this domain ( around 1998 ) . 1997 September 23 New web search engine ( non-English ) Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich launch their Russian web search engine yandex.ru and publicly present it at the Softool exhibition in Moscow . The initial development is by Comptek ; Yandex would become a separate company in 2000 . 1998 June 5 New web directory Gnuhoo , a web directory project by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel , both employees of Sun Microsystems , launches . It would later be renamed the Open Directory Project . 1999 May New web search engine AlltheWeb , based on the Ph. D. thesis of Tor Egge at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology , titled FTP Search , launches . The engine is launched by Egge 's company Fast Search & Transfer , established on July 16 , 1997 . 2000 January 1 New web search portal Baidu , a Chinese company that would grow to provide many search - related services , launches . 2002 - 3 Web search business consolidation Yahoo ! buys Inktomi ( 2002 ) and then Overture Services Inc. ( 2003 ) which has already bought AlltheWeb and Altavista . Starting 2003 , Yahoo ! starts using its own Yahoo Slurp web crawler to power Yahoo ! Search . Yahoo ! Search combines the technologies of all Yahoo ! 's acquisitions ( until 2002 , Yahoo ! had been using Google to power its search ) . 2004 - 5 November ( 2004 ) - February ( 2005 ) Change in backend providers Microsoft starts using its own indexer and crawler for MSN Search rather than using blended results from LookSmart and Inktomi . December User experience Google Suggest is introduced as a Google Labs feature . 2005 January Webmaster tools To combat link spam , Google , Yahoo ! and Microsoft collectively introduce the nofollow attribute . 2005 October New web search engine Overture Services Inc. owner Bill Gross launches the Snap search engine , with many features such as display of search volumes and other information , as well as sophisticated auto - completion and related terms display . It is unable to get traction and soon goes out of business . 2006 - 2009 New human - curated web search engine Wikia launches Wikia Search , a search engine based on human curation , but then shuts it down . Relevant dates : publicly proposed December 23 , 2006 and January 31 , 2007 , private pre-alpha December 24 , 2007 , toolbar release August 2008 , shutdown March -- May 2009 . 2008 January 28 New web search engine Cuil , a web search engine created by ex-Googlers that uses picture thumbnails to display search results , launches . It would later shut down on September 17 , 2010 . 2009 July 29 Web search engine consolidation Microsoft and Yahoo ! announce that they have made a ten - year deal in which the Yahoo ! search engine would be replaced by Bing . Yahoo ! will get to keep 88 % of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal , and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites . Yahoo ! Search will still maintain its own user interface , but will eventually feature `` Powered by Bing TM '' branding . All Yahoo ! Search global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012 . 2009 August 10 ( announced ) , rollout completed and made live June 8 , 2010 Search algorithm update Named Caffeine , this update is announced on August 10 , 2009 . It promises faster crawling , expansion of the index , and a near - real - time integration of indexing and ranking . The rollout is made live on June 8 , 2010 . September 8 User experience Google launches Google Instant , described as a search - before - you - type feature : as users are typing , Google predicts the user 's whole search query ( using the same technology as in Google Suggest , later called the autocomplete feature ) and instantaneously shows results for the top prediction . Google claims that this is estimated to save 2 -- 5 seconds per search query . SEO commentators initially believe that this will have a major effect on search engine optimization , but soon revise downward their estimate of the impact . November 1 New web search engine Blekko , a search engine that uses slashtags to allow people to search in more targeted categories , launches . 2011 June 2 Webmaster tools Google , Yahoo ! , and Microsoft announce Schema.org , a joint initiative that supports a richer range of tags that websites can use to convey better information . 2011 February 23 -- 24 Search algorithm update Google launches Google Panda , a major update affecting 12 % of search queries . The update continues with the earlier work of cracking down on spam , content farms , scrapers , and websites with a high ad - to - content ratio . The rollout is gradual over several months , and Panda will see many further updates . 2012 January 10 Search algorithm update , user experience Google launches Search Plus Your World , a deep integration of one 's social data into search . SEO commentators are critical of how the search results favor Google+ and push it to users , compared to more widely used social networks such as Facebook and Twitter . 2012 April 24 Search algorithm update Google launches its `` Webspam update '' which would soon become known as Google Penguin . 2012 May 10 User experience Microsoft announces a redesign of its Bing search engine that includes `` Sidebar '' , a social feature that searches users ' social networks for information relevant to the search query . 2012 May 16 Search algorithm update Google starts rolling out Knowledge Graph , used by Google internally to store semantic relationships between objects . Google now begins displaying supplemental information about objects related to search queries on the side . 2013 August 21 -- 22 ( approximate date for rollout ) , September 26 ( announcement ) Search algorithm update Google releases Google Hummingbird , a core algorithm update that may enable more semantic search and more effective use of the Knowledge Graph in the future .