Legal Commentary

If there are a few Web searches you forgot to do back in 2001, you now have a second chance:  Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary by allowing you to search the 2001 version of the Web with that year?s version of the Google search engine. Monica Hesse uses this as a launching point for an interesting discussion of Web archiving in today?s Washington Post. 

Not surprisingly, a Google search for ?Barak Obama? turned up far fewer results in 2001 (671) than it does today (73 million) and also far fewer than a search for ?John McCain? got in 2001 (158,000).  Not that this has much significance for who is more likely to become, or deserve to be, the next president.  ?Cole Hamels? got far few Google results in 2001 (only 6) than did ?Derek Lowe? (9,090) and yet it?s now looking like he?s more likely to be pitching in this year?s World Series.