Search engines are sophisticated software systems designed to provide hyperlinks and relevant information in response to user queries, relying on automated web crawlers and complex indexing across vast distributed computing networks. While many have existed since the 1990s, Google Search became dominant in the 2000s, holding an impressive 89-90% of the worldwide market share as of May 2025, far outstripping competitors like Bing and Yandex. The very idea of a comprehensive information retrieval system was foreshadowed in 1945 by Vannevar Bush's "memex," which envisioned interconnected data akin to modern hyperlinks. The earliest practical internet search tools emerged in the 1990s, with Archie, created by Alan Emtage in 1990, notably indexing FTP files before the World Wide Web's content was entirely automated.