Searching Google's Oldest Index

Oh, this is cool! In honor of their tenth anniversary, Google is giving us the ability to search their oldest available index from 2001. Meaning, you can go see what it would have looked like and what search results would have been before and during the absolute explosion of the internet.

Observations:

1. The page looks almost the same! How many online companies have made such minimal changes to branding and site appearance in ten years -- and been as succesful as Google has?

2. In 2001, Google bragged about indexing 1.3 billion web pages. Their index is now well over a trillion unique URLs, and growing by several billion every day. That's a thousandfold increase.

3. For fun, let's compare some search terms from then to now:

"Sarah Palin" in 2001: Your search - "sarah palin" - did not match any documents.
"Sarah Palin" in 2008: about 24,200,000 for "sarah palin"

"Barack Obama" in 2001: 672 for "barack obama".
"Barack Obama" in 2008: 80,400,000 for "barack obama"

"Michelle Obama" in 2001: about 43 for "michelle obama"
"Michelle Obama" in 2008: about 5,160,000 for "michelle obama"

kangaroos in 2001: about 84,300 for kangaroos.
kangaroos in 2008: about 6,240,000 for kangaroos

Iraq War in 2001: about 414,000 for Iraq war.
Iraq War in 2008: about 29,600,000 for iraq war.

"American Idol" in 2001: about 158 for "american idol"
"American Idol" in 2008: about 31,200,000 for "american idol"

"online customer satisfaction" in 2001: about 3680 for "online customer satisfcation"
"online customer satisfaction" in 2008: about 98,700 for "online customer satisfaction"

A search for "Wii" in 2001 turned up results for Willamette Industries and the Wildlife Institute of India. The same search in 2008 turned up results for, well, Wii.

4. Gene Weingarten, a nationally syndicated humor columnist for the Washington Post, coined the term "googlenope" meaning a search term that returns zero results. As soon as it is identified and written about online, it of course automatically becomes a "googleyup." Examples of googlenopes that were googlenopes until identified as such are "ferrari to produce minivan," "finger severed in blogging accident," and "I can't find a starbucks anywhere." You get the idea.

But in 2001, there were quite a few phrases that it's hard to imagine were ever googlenopes:

    * "dumb Paris Hilton" (0 hits in 2001; 971 hits in 2008--now 972!)
    * "fried chicken is healthy" (0 hits in 2001; 450 hits in 2008)
    * "Red Sox won World Series" (0 hits in 2001; ,640 in 2008)
    * "Washington Wizard Michael Jordan" (0 hits in 2001; 97 hits in 2008)
    * "social media websites" (0 hits in 2001; 52,200 in 2008).

5. I couldn't find any examples of things that actually have fewer results now than they did in 2001. I tried out-of-date technologies like VCRs, bankrupt companies like Polaroid, failed products like New Coke. But with a trillion web sites compares to a billion, it's almost impossible that anything would be mentioned less, even if NO ONE is talking about it anymore.

Can anyone find any examples of something that have fewer mentions now than it did 8 years ago?

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