Q 01/05

In May 2025, roughly what share of worldwide search did Google hold, according to StatCounter?

A) About 90%

B) About 93%

C) About 96%

D) About 98%

Answer · why

A) About 90%

That month was the first time in over a decade it had dipped below 90%; Bing was second on about 4%.

Q 02/05

What did Vannevar Bush call his hypothetical desk-sized information machine of 1945, a forerunner of hypertext?

A) the difference engine

B) the memex

C) the knowbot

D) the hyperdesk

Answer · why

B) the memex

Bush described the memex, a desk that stored books and records on microfilm linked by associative 'trails', in his July 1945 Atlantic Monthly essay 'A...

Q 03/05

What was the first well-documented search engine, which indexed public FTP sites from September 1990, called?

A) Gopher

B) Veronica

C) Archie

D) Wandex

Answer · why

C) Archie

The name is simply 'archive' without the v; it was written by Alan Emtage at McGill University in Montreal.

Q 04/05

HotBot, launched in 1996 on Inktomi's technology, was created by which magazine?

A) Wired

B) PC Magazine

C) Byte

D) Rolling Stone

Answer · why

A) Wired

Wired magazine's online arm HotWired launched HotBot in May 1996, running on Inktomi's search technology.

Q 05/05

Before 1993, how was the list of existing World Wide Web servers maintained?

A) By hand

B) By a CERN crawler

C) By university mainframes

D) By Usenet volunteers' scripts

Answer · why

A) By hand

It was kept By hand: Tim Berners-Lee edited the list of web servers hosted at CERN, and NCSA announced new ones on its 'What's New' page.