Barbadian dude Alan Emtage: The Man Who Invented The World’s First Search Engine (But Didn’t Patent It)

Barbadian Alan Emtage

Alan Emtage invented the world’s first search engine, but he didn’t earn a single cent from his groundbreaking invention. “I wrote a piece of code that gave birth to a multibillion-dollar industry,” he tells The Huffington Post in an exclusive video interview. “I didn’t make any money off of it, but I wouldn’t change anything.”

The self-proclaimed geek majored in computer science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and was working as a systems administrator for the School of Computer Science, where he was responsible for finding software for students and faculty. At the time, there was no other way to locate the software beyond a manual search through the directory archives, a “tedious process” that he decided to automate.

“We built this very simple program that allowed people to do the search themselves,” the native of Barbados says. The program needed a name, so Emtage called it “Archie,” which is “archive” without the V. Within months, half the internet traffic to Canada was going to the innovator’s machine. more