My original page of Famous Quotes was number one on Altavista for the search term Famous Quotes from the very beginning of that search engine and for as long as Altavista was the most important and most used search engine on the Internet.
When Altavista began dropping that page out of number one in their search results, the quality of their results deteriorated rapidly and people in the know began to use a new upstart called Google to once again be able to find their favorite sites.
Google is now tragically following in the footsteps of Altavista and toying with the search results in manipulative ways, designed to improve profits due to advertising rather than to improve results for people searching for what they want to find.
That simple page of quotations was begun as a joke by a co-worker. When he thought I had said something wrong or stupid, he would try to get me to take it back and then, if I would not, he would write it on my white board at work.
Over time, it grew to quite a collection and when I moved from that office, I copied them down and threw them up on a web page at mot.com, right after “Hello World!”
That page has moved a couple of times and several iterations of the Famous Quotes Mailing List have caused the collection to grow way beyond my own quotes. The extremely large quotations collection and been split (originally due to space limitations) across multiple sites and search engines spanning these sites have been set up.
This original Famous Quotes page remains intact and from time to time I add something.
There was at one time a disclaimer saying that there was a story behind each and every quotation and that some day I would get around to writing them down and putting them up on the site. That did not happen for so long that I took that note down from the page.
Part of what I will try to do on this blog is to finally get some of those stories into electronic form and up onto this blog. Many people have heard these stories but no one has ever been able to read them.
Please wish me luck.
Thank you,
